Greek Women

by Mitchell Carroll

The ill-deserved reputation of being a misogynist which attaches to Euripides is due, not to his own plays, but to the satire and drollery of his rival, the comedian Aristophanes, who, in B. C. 411 or 410, produced the Thesmophoriazusæ, a play so cleverly constructed that, while it seemed to defend the female sex against the charges of Euripides, really presented them in a more disgusting light. Aristophanes represents the world of women as thrown into consternation and revolt through the production of the tragedies of Euripides, such as the Hippolytus, wherein the female sex is so severely arraigned. Unable to endure his accusations, an assembly of women is called at the Thesmophoria to plan the destruction of their arch enemy. Euripides, however, hears of the assembly, and prevails on his father-in-law, Mnesilochus, to disguise himself as a woman and seek admittance, that he may plead the cause of the tragedian. The humor of the debate lies in the fact that, after several women have roundly abused Euripides for slandering their sex, Mnesilochus, attired in rustic female garb, eloquently reminds them of the truths which Euripides might have divulged had he chosen to do so. One sin after another is glibly and facetiously piled up against the feminine record, until the few calumnies attributed to Euripides seem insignificant beside the mountain of crimes and foibles the supposed matron heaps up against her sisters. The picture which Aristophanes, in his clever bit of satire, presents of the women of his day is an exceedingly repulsive one. They are represented as profligate, licentious, stupid, fond of drink, thieves and liars. No other Greek writer has given them so base a character. But we must remember that we are reading comedy. "The point of the Thesmophoriazusæ, so far as the women are concerned, is that, while Aristophanes pretends to pillory Euripides for his abuse of them, his own satire is far more searching and penetrates more deeply into the secrets of domestic life."

The grotesque distortion by Aristophanes of the character of the philosopher Socrates is sufficiently well known; the contrast between the sentiments which he attributes to Euripides and the tragic poet's own views as presented in his plays is very striking; hence the pictures that he draws of the life and manners of women must not be accepted without important allowances. Aristophanes was writing to make people laugh, not to reveal the secrets of the household, and his plays were exclusively for an audience of men. Hence coarseness and buffoonery, as elements of comic effect, are continually availed of, and Aristophanes considered that he was witty in maligning the female sex. It would clearly be unfair and even absurd to regard Aristophanes as an accurate expositor of feminine life in Athens. But it is a noticeable fact that, from B. C. 411 onward, there is, as seen in the extant plays of Aristophanes, a marked prominence given to the female sex. Women, who heretofore have played but a subordinate rôle in comedy, now frequently have the principal parts. Comedy, more truly than any other department of literature, reflects the current thought; and while the characters of comedy play a rôle that is the reverse of actuality, comic invention deals with real movements, and this intentional prominence of the usually neglected sex can have but one interpretation: the Woman Question had become a problem which profoundly engaged the attention of the society of the time.

It is a difficult task to attempt to trace in the comedies of Aristophanes the thread of a social movement. He utilized the events and opinions of the day for fun making, and did not greatly concern himself with the serious aspects of social problems. He was an ultra-conservative, and desired to bring the new thought of the day into disrepute by exhibiting its ludicrous side. Hence he makes use of the woman's rights movement to give free rein to his fancy, and to delight the public with obscene jokes on the vices and weaknesses of women and with clever caricatures of their leaders. Yet the attentive reader can get glimpses here and there into the more serious aspects of the question, and can recognize behind some of the distorted, caricatured figures types which are not in themselves comic.

The other two plays of Aristophanes in which women figure prominently are the Lysistrata and the Ecclesiazusæ. In each of these the company of women is directed by a leader who in talents and aggressiveness is far superior to her fellows. These two have not the many small weaknesses of the other dames; they have the collective interest of their sex at heart; and they know how to form a plan and how to carry it through. The other women, in spite of their thoughtlessness and weakness of character, are dominated by the strong personalities of their self-appointed leaders. Hence, by a study of the controlling spirit of each play, in spite of the caricature in the poet's delineation, we may be able to form some conception of the currents of thought of the day as they affected women.

Lysistrata is the wife of an Athenian magistrate, and has been strongly affected by the ill success of the Peloponnesian War. She has meditated long over the experiences of the female sex in general during the last decade of the war. During the first ten years, the Grecian women had borne in silence and without forming any opinions, in the narrow confines of the home, the mistakes of their husbands; but gradually they had observed how politics, in the hands of the men, was going from bad to worse, and how want was increasing year by year. They began to ask questions, to find fault in a mild way, though only with the result that the men sent them back to their domestic duties with the brusque answer: "War shall be a care to men." That which finally roused the women to action was the realization that the men, in the face of events, had unanimously recognized their own helplessness. Lysistrata therefore, in Aristophanes's play, counsels the women to break their chains, seize the reins of government, and bring the dreadful war to an end. She tells the assembled women that they have carried a double burden in the war. As mothers, they have borne sons whom they have been compelled to send forth to death; while as wives, they have been deprived of their husbands; even the maidens have grown old in single blessedness, on account of the absence of men available as husbands. With such words as these she arouses the spirit of her comrades. They, in turn, speak of their virtues, their natural gifts, and their love for their native country, to which they are so much indebted, and in duty to it they are ready to turn their attention to things of war; for, say they: "The Attic woman is no slave, and has sufficient courage to take up arms in her country's cause: now, war shall be a care to women."

These reflections have a decided importance in a consideration of the social history of the times by suggesting how the female sex developed under the trying conditions of war.

In the poet's delineation of Lysistrata, the scene in which she describes to the assembled Athenian and Laconian deputies their political sins gains special importance. She possesses historical insight. By recounting historical facts, she reminds them of what the Laconians have done for the Athenians, and what the latter for the Laconians, and awakens them to general Pan-Hellenic interests, for which they should labor in common instead of weakening their power in fratricidal war. In this address she characterizes herself as follows: "I am a woman, it is true; but I have understanding; and of myself I am not badly off in respect of intellect. By having often heard the remarks of my father and my elders, I have not been ill educated."

We have then in the Lysistrata the women of the day led on in a great patriotic movement by an educated and eloquent woman. The play exhibits a constant battle of words between men and women, each grouped in a chorus. The women seize the Acropolis and make themselves experts in the science of war. Their plans succeed; and the husbands are reduced to a terrible plight by the novel resolution adopted by their wives to bring them to terms. Envoys at length come from the belligerent parties, and peace is concluded under the direction of the clever Lysistrata.

If from the unbridled drollery and serious moral of the drama we endeavor to reach conclusions regarding the Woman Question, they will be found to be about as follows. There were at this time certain prominent women who were endeavoring to have the natural capabilities of the female sex more justly esteemed, and energetic voices were being raised against the humble status of woman in society and in public affairs. This movement was quickened in the latter part of the century, owing to the mistakes of the Peloponnesian War, but the efforts of women to assert their rights were met by the violent opposition of the conservative party. The leader in the Lysistrata, in her gift of speech and breadth of understanding, typifies some historical women who took a prominent part in the movement, and these were, probably, some aristocratic ladies who had been influenced by Aspasia.

The unique importance of the Lysistrata consists in its portraiture of the leaders of the woman's rights movement and in its suggestion of the ambitious projects they were prepared to undertake. The Ecclesiazusæ is, like the Lysistrata, a picture of woman's ascendency, but it goes further in satirizing some of the schemes which in daily conversation and in the works of the philosophers were being presented for bettering the conditions of society and improving the status of women. The success of such a play presupposes that the minds of the audience were prepared for it by the informal discussion of such questions in everyday life. The Athenian ladies, in the Ecdesiazusæ, under the leadership of Praxagora,--who is endowed with much the same gifts as Lysistrata, and is, in fact, a replica of that clever woman,--disguise themselves as men and crowd the public assembly; by means of the majority of votes which they have thus fraudulently obtained, they overturn the government of the men and proclaim the supremacy of the women in the State. Praxagora, the leading agitator, is chosen strategis, and she immediately proclaims, as the fundamental principles of the new State, community of property and free trade between the sexes--ideas which were prominent in the ideal Republic of Plato and had been earlier projected by Protagoras. "The point of the satire consists in this: that the arguments by which the women get the upper hand all turn on their avowed conservatism; men change and shift, women preserve their old customs and will maintain the ethos of the State; but no sooner have they got authority than they show themselves more democratic than the demagogues, more new-fangled in their political notions than the philosophers. They upset time-honored institutions and make new ones to suit their own caprices, squaring the laws according to the logic of feminine instinct. Of course, speculations like those of Plato's Republic are satirized in the farcical scenes which illustrate the consequences of this female revolution. But perhaps the finest point about the comedy is its harmonious insight into the workings of women's minds--a clear sense of what a topsy-turvy world we should have to live in if women were the lawgivers and governors."