The main interest of the Suppliant Women is the same as that of three other plays: the Phoenician Women, the Trojan Women, and the Hecuba. They are concerned with war; but war, as seen from the woman’s side, a thing of unredeemed and useless suffering. All the ‘glory of conquest’ disappears: women and children are seen paying the price of men’s ambition and pride. The Trojan Women is the most lamentable and the most effective of the series. Written according to the oldest formula of tragedy, the chorus are the chief persons in the action. Hecuba, Cassandra and Andromache are only particular representatives of the sufferings which all the women in the play endure. The two male characters, the lustful hypocrite Menelaus and the honest servant Talthybius are of quite subordinate interest.
The play is an accumulation of sorrow upon sorrow, but the climax is the murder of the little child Astyanax, a political crime, not inspired by any of the human feelings of hatred and revenge, but coldly calculated by men for the sake of future advantage. It is the women, the mother and grandmother of the child, who have to suffer, that men may sleep in safety. As Andromache bitterly says, she has always followed out the whole duty of woman.
‘Those things that have been invented as virtuous pursuits for women, at those I laboured ever in Hector’s house. To begin with—whether censure should attach to women for it or not, I may not say—but at any rate, the thing in itself brings a woman an evil name when she does not remain ever within doors. So I put aside the desire for going out and stayed at home. Moreover, I never admitted within our house the fantastic talk that some females enjoy: I found my own sound sense the best teacher in domestic matters, and made myself sufficing. A silent tongue and a quiet face—that was what I rendered to my lord.’
And now she has her reward: she is to become a concubine in the house of her husband’s murderer, and is told that one night in the arms of her new lord will make her forget the past. As for her baby boy; ‘dear youngling nestling in your mother’s arms, your skin so sweet and fragrant,’ he is torn away and hurled down to death.
But Andromache is not worse treated than the other women. Hecuba is handed over to Odysseus to be his slave, to sweep the floor and grind the daily corn. The virgin Polyxena is reserved to be slain over the tomb of Achilles; for it is not enough that living men should make women their chattels; even the dead hero demands the tribute of a maiden’s life. Cassandra has lived a vestal, dedicated to the service of the god, and she too has her reward. The great king deigns to take her to his bed, and in a scene of the grimmest irony the unhappy girl sings her own marriage hymn. There is all the music of the hymeneal chorus, but we have one solitary figure—the unwedded bride—instead of the joyful procession of youths and maidens.
The Hecuba deals with the same events as the Trojan Women and in the same spirit. The sacrifice of Polyxena is consummated and Hecuba takes vengeance on one of her children’s murderers, the Thracian king Polymnestor. Beguiled into the captive women’s tent he sees his own children murdered and is then blinded. The scene where he comes reeling out with blood-dripping eyes reaches the limits of the horrible, but Euripides does not forget to draw the feminist moral.
‘If any one,’ the king says, ‘has spoken ill of women in the past, or is now in the act of speaking or will some day speak, I will cut all his words short—listen—Neither sea nor land breeds such a race as women are: only the man who has to do with them from time to time knows what they can do.’
The unhappy victim of a single woman forgets his logic and imputes the fault of an individual to the sex. If the aggressor had been a man, his thoughts would have been different and so the chorus tell him.
‘Be not over-fierce against us nor bring the feminine element into your troubles. There is no need to blame all womankind.’