Woman in the golden ages

by Amelia Gere Mason

In the glamour the poets have cast about their great creations, and the marvelous power with which they have made these women live for us, we are apt to lose sight of the fact that the moral force of the best of them is centered in the superhuman immolation of themselves for the benefit of men, to whom it never occurs that any consideration whatever is due to these innocent sufferers. They are subject to men, and ready to lay down their lives, if need be to make the world comfortable and pleasant for them; yet they have only sorrow for themselves.

More than a thousand women is one man
Worthy to see the light of life,

says the young Iphigenia, as she folds her saffron veil about her, and goes to her doom with words of love and forgiveness, praying for the cruel masters she dies to save. The essence of her training, as of her religion, lies in this meekly uttered sentiment, though the fated child pleads for pity, since “the sorriest life is better than the noblest death.” Strong men, among whom are her father and Achilles, the heroes of the ancient world, stand calmly by and let her die. The powerful lover, who will give his life later to avenge the death of his friend, is sorry to lose so sweet a flower for his wife, but he makes no real effort to save her. When she is told that the gods have decreed her sacrifice for the good of her country, the cry of nature is silenced, the touching appeal is stilled. She rises to a divine height of courage, and is the consoler rather than the consoled.

Not less pathetic is the fate of Alcestis, though it is a voluntary one. She robes herself for the tomb as tranquilly as if she were going out on a message of mercy. With sad dignity she crowns with myrtle the altar at which she prays, but not until she takes leave of the familiar room so consecrated by love and happiness do the tears begin to fall. This tender wife, who freely gives her life to save her husband, does not falter as she passionately embraces her weeping children, and bids a kind farewell to her pitying servants. The only thing she asks for herself is to see the sun once more, and she tries to inspire this selfish, posing, half-hearted husband with her own fortitude, as her spirit “glides on light wing down the silent paths of sleep.” One cannot help wondering if she never had a misgiving that the man who could ask his wife to comfort him for his unspeakable misery in letting her die for him was not worth dying for. But the Greek women had been long trained in the school of passive suffering, and it never seemed to occur to them that it was not quite in the nature of things for the weaker half of the human family to have a monopoly of the sacrifices. It was a part of their destiny; the gods so willed it. Men looked upon it as a comfortable arrangement for themselves, that had good moral results for women. To-day we are inclined to ask why a discipline that is good for women, and tends toward their moral perfection, is not also good for men, who have a like need of being perfected.

But, in spite of rational theories, the world’s heart still thrills to a generous emotion so overpowering as to drown all consideration of self, whether or not it is faulty in its mundane wisdom or its arithmetic. And this it is which casts so lasting a glamour over the women who loom out of the twilight of that far-off time, in noble proportions that dwarf the selfish, arrogant men with whom they are mated. They rise to the dignity of goddesses in their divine pity and courage, while the great Achilles, the masculine ideal of the Greeks, weeps like a child, and sends a generation of men to sleep on the plains of Troy, because he cannot have what he wishes.

Yet it is in the minds of men that these women were conceived, and it is impossible to suppose that they had not at least some faint counterpart in real life, though possibly men, and women as well, are apt to make ideals of what they think ought to be rather than of what is. But why did the Greek poets cast such ridicule and dishonor upon the sex which they have shown capable of such supreme devotion and such exalted virtues?

There is a touch of justice in the bitter scorn with which the blind Œdipus speaks of his sons who

Keep house at home like maidens in their prime,

while his daughters wear themselves to death for him and for his sorrows.

No women they, but men in will to toil.