Transcript The Social Position of the Athenian Woman

The Social Position of the Athenian
Woman
Domestic Tasks (Attic Red-Figure
Kylix, ca. 480-470 BCE)
The Problems of the Male Lens
"With the society of Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. we are in
much the same situation [as in attempting to understand other traditional,
male dominated societies]. In some respects, we might think, better off, but in
one crucial point, actually worse. Better off, as we might suppose, since in the
imaginative literature of classical Athens we have what seems to be a highly
articulate and prominent, not marginal, presentation of women, and their role
in society: in this world, it seems, women "speak" and share the centre of
attention with men. But this is a mirage: we can have no direct access to the
model of Athenian society to which women subscribed, even as it might have
been expressed in the dominant language of men. For the evidence available
to us is almost without exception the product of men and addressed to men in
a male dominated world."
~ John Gould, Journal of Hellenic Studies 100 (1980) 38.
Modern Male Misrepresentations of the Social
Role of the Athenian Woman
 Gomme: freedom of movement.
 “It is the concern of men--no place for women’s
schemes--what lies outside: you stay within and
cause no hurt.” (Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes,
200-201).
 LeGall: formal declaration of citizenship in a phratry by
fathers for their daughters.

BUT no deme registration; no rights to legal possession of
property (kyrios and dowry).
 A Better, More Comprehensive Model: John Gould’s
“Complementarity of Law, Custom, and Myth.”
Women’s Dress: himation over full-length
chiton (terracotta, early third century
BCE)
The Athenian Woman and Athenian
Law
 The kyrios and the woman as perpetual
minor.
 Women as transmitters of property
(epidikoi and epikleroi).


No rights in questions relating to marriage.
No rights to legal possession of property
(kyrios and dowry).
 Women as nameless in legal oratory.
Scenes from the Gynaikonitis (Attic Red-Figure Kylix,
480-470 BCE)
Athenian Women and Athenian
Custom
 Women’s Seclusion (does not imply a lack of
respect according to Athenian male viewpoint);
“submerged lines of demarcation” for the poor
women of Athens.
 Time-Consuming Occupations:



Provisions for food.
Weaving.
Combing and spinning wool.
Athenian Women/Athenian Myth
 “Encounters between men and women in Greek myth
with the wild and the sacred, with what is outside the
limits of ordered civilisation, and with the forces of life,
with mountains and forests, with rivers, springs,
fountains…” Gould, JHS 100 (1980) 52.
 Ambiguity: the wild and the domestic (cf. Pandora at
Hesiod, Theogony, 589): metaphors for Greek women-ploughing and sowing the field; yoking and breaking
wild animals; liminality and the Amazon myth.
 Page DuBois, Sowing the Body: Psychoanalysis and
Ancient Representations of Women (Chicago 1988):
progression in Greek use of metaphor--woman changes
from productive, life-giving force to barren receptacle
carrying male sperma.
Athenian Black-Figure Amphora, ca. 530-525 BCE: Heracles
battles Amazons
Aphrodite (ca 200-150 BCE; marble
from Benghazi, eastern Libya)