Feminism in Greek Literature from Homer to Aristotle

by F. A. Wright

With him it is an unquestioning belief that the right is, in nature, superior to the left, the upper to the lower, the front to the back; and nature, when no more important purpose stands in the way, places the more honourable part in the more honourable position. So it is that the heart, which is the nobler organ, is in the upper part of the body, while the stomach is in the lower. As he is equally sure that the male is superior to the female, the male elements in reproduction will come from the right or noble part of the body.

But the part taken by the male and female elements in the process of generation is, according to Aristotle, absolutely different. The child is not formed from a mixture of both, but the female contributes the material, the male is the active agent. The analogy used is that of a bed: the female is the wood, the male the carpenter, who, from the wood, makes the bed. The female is passive, the male is active:

It is through a certain incapacity that the female is female: females are weaker and colder in nature than males, and we must look upon the female character as being a sort of natural deficiency.[13]

Women, in Aristotle’s view, are rather plants than animals; for the animal differs from the plant, chiefly in having sense-perception. If the sensitive soul is not present, the body is no better than a corpse, and this sensitive soul is supplied only by the male. The female provides the material, the male fashions it; the body is from the female, the soul from the male, who can stand outside the body just as the artist stands outside his creation. It certainly seems that female children progress more quickly than male, but that is merely a proof of their inferiority; for all inferior things come sooner to their perfection or end, and as this is true of works of art so it is true of what is formed by nature.

These quotations will illustrate that curious depreciation of the female element in nature and especially in man which is one of the weaker points in the treatise. It is continually recurring; for example, in describing the hair of animals these are the reasons given for baldness:

The front part of the head goes bald because the brain is there and man is the only animal to go bald, because his brain is much the largest and moistest. Women do not go bald.[14]

So in the discussion of voice we read:

The voice of the female is higher than that of the male in all animals, and in man this is especially noticeable. A deep note is better than a high pitched: depth belongs to the nobler nature, and depth of tone shows a sort of superiority.[15]

Nor is this view of the physical, and consequently the mental, inferiority of the female confined to the De Generatione: it permeates the History of Animals, and finds its clearest expression there in a passage which perhaps gives the ultimate reason of Aristotle’s error: