Greek Women

by Mitchell Carroll

Differing from his countrymen in the conception of the character, capabilities, and rights of woman, Euripides has in his plays presented ideals of a womanhood which would give woman something higher to live for than the drudgery of household duties, and would raise the sex in the estimation of men. Heroism in everyday life is the lesson he constantly teaches by the examples of such women as Alcestis, the devoted wife and mother; as Polyxena, the brave martyr-maiden; as Andromache, faithful in thraldom to the memory of her valiant husband; as Macaria and Iphigenia, sacrificing themselves for the sake of a great cause; and as Electra, the devoted sister. Nowhere can one find a longer catalogue of noble women, not heroines of prehistoric days living in a golden age, but women who in character and sentiments were like to those met with every day in every community. Euripides's heart was burdened by the sorrows and wrongs of the sex; and he combated the social system which was at the root of the evil, not by violent assaults upon it, not by seeking to overturn that which was the product of centuries and was a natural result of the Greek idea of the city-state, but by showing women how they could better their condition and by giving men more exalted ideas of the nature of woman. Says Mr. Arthur S. Way, the translator and ardent advocate of Euripides, who, of all Greek scholars, has most profoundly and sympathetically investigated this question:

"Euripides set himself to appeal to human hearts as he found them, to exalt men's estimate of woman, to redeem women from despair of themselves, by uplifting before them inspiring ideals of womanhood which might be types and examples for all time. And, first, he gave them those transcendent four--who in the union of the sweetness and lovable gentleness of the pure womanly with the magnificent exaltation of the highest heroism are unapproached by Homer's Penelope and Andromache, or by Sophocles's Antigone. He gave them Alcestis, who surrendered her life freely, not so much for her husband as for wifely duty's sake, and never flinched nor faltered as the horror of great darkness swallowed her up, but by strength of a mother's love stayed up the feet that were sinking into Hades, till her dying breath had made her children's future sure, and then in death's grasp quietly laid her hand, and so was drawn down, faintly and ever more faintly murmuring love. He gave them Iphigenia, who, summoned from the cloistered shelter of her home as to a bridal, found herself set without warning before the altar of death, and yet shrank and shuddered only till the full import of the great sacrifice demanded dawned upon her, and then sprang full-statured to the height of a godlike resolve; who grasped in her pure hands the scales of national justice, who bore up with her slender wrists the fate of her fatherland, and sang the triumph pasan of Hellas as she paced to death. He gave them Macaria, who attained a height of selfless heroism unimagined till that hour, in that unasked she gave her life for the salvation of a noble house and of alien helpers; who refused to hearken to the suggestion which whispered a hope of escape, but with unreverted eyes turned from all joys and all hopes of young life, and spent her last breath in consolation and encouragement to those who clung with adoring love and passionate tears about her parting feet. He gave them Polyxena, the most pathetic figure of all, sustained by no proud consciousness of salvation wrought from suffering, but only welcoming death as an angel of deliverance from shame and long regrets, who stood on the grave-mound, arrayed in spotless innocence, with modest lips that calmly made in the name of honor their last request, and so gave her throat to the sword, while the fierce men who but now had clamored for her blood acclaimed her of all maidens noblest of soul.

"He brought before them women in all the relations of life, everywhere surpassing the men in goodness, in constancy, in wisdom, in counsel. They watched the ministering angel who sat by a brother's bed, and wiped the dew of agony from his brow and the foam of madness from his lips; they held their breath while a gentle-hearted priestess bemoaned to her unknown brother the cruel destiny which even then drew her to the verge of fratricide. They saw the wife who hailed a death of fire to be reunited to her slain lord, and the wife who devoted herself to save, or die with, her husband. They heard one mother plead the cause of honor and right against cold statecraft; they listened as another besought her doomed sons to be reconciled. They thrilled beholding the princess-slave whose love was stronger than death and whose highborn spirit flashed defiance to a treacherous foe; and that other, who, remembering her hero-husband, would not suffer the imminent death to make herself or her children play a craven part, but mingled proud scorn of the murderous usurper with regrets for hopes foregone. In the noble words of Professor Mahaffy: 'These are the women who have so raised the ideal of the sex, that in looking upon them the world has passed from neglect to courtesy, from courtesy to veneration; these are they, who, across many centuries, first of frivolity and sensuality, then of rudeness and barbarism, join hands with the ideals of our religion and our chivalry, the martyred saints, the chaste and holy virgins of romance--nay, more, with the true wives, the devoted mothers, of our own day.'

"But there are female characters in his plays which have been pointed to as proving a very different attitude toward women. Of these, Phædra was the best-abused by his enemies, who wilfully shut their eyes to her true character. She is, by the very plot of the play, the helpless victim of the malice of a goddess. With her brain beclouded by fever frenzy, she agonizes for clear vision and wails for peace of mind. She is a pure-souled, true-hearted woman, who tingles with shame and shudders with horror at the hideous thing that has been born in her. She is driven by the imminence of ruin to a desperate expedient to shield her name from the unmerited dishonor which she might well believe, from the ambiguously worded threat with which Hippolytus departed, was to be cast upon her. He gave her cause to think that he would accuse her to his father of a crime of which she knew herself innocent. In her despair, she saw no help but to forestall him by an accusation equally false.

"Medea and Creusa--even Clytemnestra and Hermione--are not portrayed as transgressors without excuse: in each case, the audience heard the woman plead her cause and proclaim the doctrine that woman has rights as well as man, that what man avenges as the inexpiable wrong is not a light offence against her. It may well be that they were not ripe for the reception of ideas so unheard-of, that many of them mistook his drift; but the seed sank in, to bear fruit in due time.

"In each instance the sinner is a woman deeply wronged, or in sore straits, or under dæmoniac influence: there are no such gratuitously wicked characters as Goneril, Lady Macbeth, or Tamora. Yet no one calls Shakespeare a misogynist. Why, then, was it possible for Euripides's enemies to charge him with being one, a charge doubtless echoed by a good many thoughtless and stupid people in his day, but little creditable to modern scholarship? For three reasons: first, the wilful or obtuse misunderstanding of such characters as Phædra--the representation of these by Euripides was the main ground on which Aristophanes alleged that the tendency of his plays was immoral. Secondly, we occasionally come upon the censures of the faults and foibles of women--their proneness to scandal, to uncharitable judgments of their fellows, their pettiness, frivolity, and so forth. It must be admitted, too, that the context sometimes justifies us in concluding that the poet is uttering his own sentiments. It was, indeed, to be expected that a thinker who had so high a conception of what women might be should be painfully impressed by the contrast presented by what they too often were. Nor is it matter for wonder that he should take opportunities of bringing the same feeling home to them. It is not enough to set noble ideals before people who are not yet conscious of the incompatibility of their present habits and aims with the emulation of those ideals. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, as indeed these were, compared with the hideous presentments of female morality in which Aristophanes revels, till his readers might imagine that pure and temperate women were quite the exception in the Athens of his day. And was he not a friend to women who gave, for the sake of his sisters for whom heroic ideals might seem set too high, this winsome model, 'not too fair and good for human nature's daily food'?

"'Beauty wins not love for woman from the yokemate of her life:

Many an one by goodness wins it; for to each true-hearted wife,

Knit in love unto her husband, is Discretion's secret told.

These her gifts are: though her lord be all uncomely to behold,