Feminism in Greek Literature from Homer to Aristotle

by F. A. Wright

It must be remembered that the Homeric poems were not written to suit the taste of the old Mediterranean people, who, if we may trust the evidence of archæology and certain signs in their language, had but a low code of sexual morality, and were inclined to regard women as mere instruments of pleasure. The Epic, in its original shape, was composed for the Achæan chiefs who came down into Greece from Central Europe, and in sexual matters were rather of the Scandinavian type. But the Achæans were only a small ruling class, and were soon assimilated by the conquered peoples, whose language they adopted. A second tide of invasion by the northern tribes called Dorian led to somewhat more permanent results, but the original Mediterranean race was always far superior in numbers, and unless inter-marriage was prohibited by law it was only a matter of time for the primary racial type to reappear. Hence the interest of Greek history, which is one long process of inter-blending and change: the renascence of the conquered and the gradual disappearance of the conquerors. Hence also the difference of view in all feminist matters between Homer and much of the later Greek literature.

The Odyssey especially, which, though perhaps later in composition than the original Iliad, has been less worked over and received fewer additions, is based on an entirely different idea of woman’s position from that which was held after the seventh century B.C. Samuel Butler’s theory that the Odyssey was composed by a woman, perhaps Nausicaa herself, is hardly capable of exact proof, but at any rate women in the Odyssey are never degraded as they are in many of the later passages of the Iliad, and the one lewd passage, the first lay of Demodocus (in Book 8), ‘the loves of Ares and Aphrodite,’ is a plain interpolation, and a clumsy one at that. Women indeed pull the strings in the Odyssey: the goddess Athena, the nymphs, Calypso and Circe, and the mortals, Penelope and Nausicaa, are the principal actors in the drama. With both these latter there are traces of the old German custom of Mutterrecht: the kingship of the tribe seems to go on the woman’s side. The claimants to Odysseus’ chieftainship seek it through his wife; Nausicaa is the only daughter, and her marriage is of importance to all the tribe. So Calypso and Circe are represented as island-queens, living in independent sovereignty, and normally unconcerned with male companionship. Odysseus is to both very much in the position of a prince consort, and, being an active man, suffers severely from lack of occupation and lack of power. Athena is the guiding spirit of the whole action, and takes a motherly interest in the hero, but otherwise she is pure intelligence superior to man and quite free from any desire for man’s society.

The women of the Odyssey follow her lead, and have little trace of that over-sexuality which is ascribed by later writers to all women as a natural trait. It cannot be said that the wise Penelope shows any womanish weakness in her constant love: she bears her husband’s absence with resignation, and maintains his authority intact during a period of twenty years. On his return she is by no means over-anxious to recognise him. When the nurse tells her of the slaughter of the suitors by Odysseus she calls her a fool, and threatens her with punishment for disturbing a busy woman with idle tales. Telemachus chides her for her wilful stubbornness: Odysseus dresses himself in royal raiment, but fails to make any impression, and finally, in disgust, calls to the nurse to make him up a bed so that he may go off and sleep by himself, for, says he, this woman has a heart of iron in her breast. When at last she is convinced, she explains that her hesitation has been due to a well-founded distrust of men and their wiles, and she is content to let her husband go off the very next morning to visit the old Laertes.

Again, Nausicaa has no traces of the timid shyness which is counted a virtue among harem women. She faces the half-naked Odysseus boldly, as he comes from the bush where he has been hiding ‘like a lion of the hills, rained upon and buffeted by the wind, and his eyes are ablaze,’ and in all her dealings with him she is a charming mixture of generosity and caution.

Moreover, the morality of the Odyssey in all sexual matters is very high, and, if it is not offensive to say so, it is women’s morality. There is very little appeal to the sensual man, and although Calypso and Circe were by later writers taken as types of the voluptuous female, their fascination in the Odyssey is left entirely to the imagination, and they are pictured as industrious housewives. The description is the same for both—‘singing in a sweet voice within doors as she walked to and fro before the loom.’ Little or nothing is said of any physical attraction they may have possessed.

So with the punishment meted out at the end of the story to the maid-servants who had accepted the embraces of the suitors. First, they carry out the corpses of their dead lovers, then they wash and cleanse the bloody floor, and finally they are hanged—twelve of them together—‘like thrushes or doves caught in a snare; and they struggled with their feet for a little while, but not for long.’ It is one of the few ruthless passages in the poem: there is no tendency here to err on the side of indulgence to the sins of the flesh, and for such sins harsher measure is dealt out to the woman than to the man.

But as significant as anything of the gulf between the Odyssey and later Greek literature is the treatment of the two famous sisters, Helen and Clytemnestra.

Helen, to the later Greeks the type of the wanton, appears in the Odyssey as the faithful wife, respected and self-respecting, of King Menelaus. She lives in his palace, busy with domestic duties, and when she thinks of the past it is to rejoice over her return home and escape from Troy, ‘where,’ she says, ‘I used to mourn over the cruel fate which Aphrodite sent upon me, when she led me from my beloved country, leaving behind me my daughter, my home, and my husband dear, who lacked nothing of perfection in mind or in body.’ It is a very different picture from that of Paris’ mistress, as we have her in later stories, flying with a foreign youth from her lawful lord, and betraying her too fond master.

So Clytemnestra—after the lyric poets of the seventh and sixth centuries had worked up her story—is that most dreadful figure to King Man, the regicide, the woman who dares, by craft and guile, to kill the man set over her as ruler. In all the later stories it is Clytemnestra who arranges the details of Agamemnon’s death—the bath, the enveloping robe, and the axe; it is she who deals the fatal blow, while her lover, Ægisthus, is a cowardly nonentity, entirely under the dominion of the woman.

But in the Odyssey the story is very different. It is told twice—by Agamemnon to Odysseus in Hades, and by Nestor to Telemachus at Pylos, and this last version is significant enough to be given word for word: