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Misogyny in euripides
Male role in ancient Greece
Conclusion of the study of Peloponnesian war in Athens
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Euripides’ Bacchae presents a challenge to the identity of the Athenian male citizen. The tragedy undermines masculinity and traditional gender roles by exposing their vulnerability and easy transgression, implicates Athenian ideals of rationality and self-control in the fall of Thebes’ royal household, and complicates the concept of what it means to be a citizen. With Athens’ defeat in the Peloponnesian War looming, Euripides represents the Athenian anxiety as they faced their potential destruction and loss of their city and their identity.
The most blatant aspect of Athenian male citizen identity that the Bacchae challenges is masculinity. Pentheus and his transgression of gender is the play’s most prominent example; his masculinity and
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With the Bacchae having been first produced in the final days of the Peloponnesian War, Athenian defeat looming, the destruction of the soldier in Pentheus poses a distinct threat to the survival of Athens in the face of military conquest. MENTION SOMETHING ABOUT PENTHEUS’ FAILING MASCULINITY IN HIS INABILITY TO RESTRAIN DIONYSUS – ATHENIAN INABILITY TO RESTRAIN THE DELIAN LEAGUE? PELOPONNESIAN WAR? Though Pentheus has been driven out of his mind by Dionysus, he is performing femininity and losing himself in it; with this in mind, he can be easily read as having been performing masculinity, earlier. His scorn of Cadmus and Tiresias (Euripides, Bacchae 248) for their Bacchant’s attire demonstrates Pentheus’ perhaps already-present insecurity in the role of the overly-masculine soldier-citizen; in all his aggression, he is compensating, performing. This is further evident in his examination of Dionysus the Stranger, Pentheus demonstrates a “hyperfocus” on masculine presentation, harshly critiquing Dionysus’ beauty (Euripides, Bacchae 453-95). The Bacchae emphasises the performative nature of masculinity not only in the case of Pentheus but in the case of the …show more content…
This complication presents another challenge to the Athenian masculine identity and conceptualisation of gender. In Pentheus, femininity represents weakness, submission, madness; in Dionysus, femininity is power. Dionysus’ use of femininity is what destroys Pentheus, dressing him in women’s clothing (Euripides, Bacchae 915) and, even earlier, capturing his intrigue with his own feminine disguise (Euripides, Bacchae 455). Pentheus and Dionysus’ roles switch with Pentheus’ madness; Dionysus as the Stranger first appears as the subjugated, passive actor of the two, in the traditionally feminine role once he is captured, and his appearance reflects this (Euripides, Bacchae 450). Pentheus appears in the active, masculine role, having captured and restrained Dionysus, cutting his hair and interrogating him, even cutting his hair in an attempt to strip him of some of his feminine beauty (Euripides, Bacchae, 455-510). With Pentheus’ madness, however, these roles are reversed, though Dionysus still appears feminine – this enduring quality a sign of femininity as power in his case – and Pentheus appears similarly, though this symbolises his passivity. It is notable that, alongside being presented as feminine in appearance, Dionysus appears multiple times in the play in
In The Bacchae, I believe that Euripides uses the relationship of male and female to explore the alluring concept of feminine empowerment in a patriarchal society and to demonstrate the cost this empowerment subsequently has on ordered civilization. In this paper, I will argue that Euripides uses the conflictual relation between the genders to criticize the role of women in Greek society while also showing the consequences of a total feminine revolt. Through developing this conflict, Euripides is demonstrating how the path to the most successful civilization is through a balance of masculine rationality and feminine emotional freedom. I will prove this by analyzing the positions of Pentheus, the Bacchants, and Dionysus throughout the play. The character Pentheus
Some evaluations claim that the Dionysus appearing in The Bacchae is fairly true embodiment of the ideals of ancient Athens. He demands only worship and proper reverence for his name, two matters of honor that pervaded both the Greek tragedies and the pious society that viewed them. In other plays, Oedipus' consultations with Apollo and the many Choral appeals to Zeus reveal the Athenian respect for their gods, while Electra's need for revenge and Antigone's obligation to bury Polyneices both epitomize the themes of respect and dignity. Yet although Dionysus personifies these two motifs, his clashes with the rest of Athenian tradition seem to make him its true adversary. Dionysius distinctly opposes the usual views on gender, age, rationality and divinity, leaving the reader to wonder whether these contrasts were Euripidean attempts to illuminate specific facets of the culture itself.
The Bacchant are considered offensive to the Theban elites, due to their destruction of livestock and men. However, they also pose a threat to the structure of Theban politics. Pentheus feels threated both politically and personally due to the, “insolent hybris of the Bacchae, a huge humiliation to Greeks” (779). The humiliation is not only towards Greeks a whole, and due to Pentheus's power he is looked poorly on due to these women. The fact that women overruled men, the serving class uprooting from the served, ensues a chaos which creates a loss of faith to Pentheus's constitutents. Since political destruction is not an outcome Pentheus wants, he must supress the female rebellion. Female independence becomes dangerous and in order to lessen these anxietie...
Gender is made explicit as a theme throughout the Oresteia through a series of male-female conflicts and incorrectly gendered characters dominated by the figure of Clytemnestra, a woman out of place. This opposition of gender then engenders all the other oppositions of the trilogy; conflicts of oikos and polis, chthonic and Olympian, old and young can be assigned to female and male spheres respectively. In this essay I will look at how the polis examines itself in terms of gender by focusing on the Eumenides' exploration of the myth of matriarchy, issues of the conflict between oikos and polis and the use of speech within the polis. I will then look at how these themes are brought together in the trial and the play provides an image of resolution. Many of these issues are set up in the opening speech of the priestess Pythia as already resolved and are then reconfirmed by the trial itself and closing images order.
Yet, despite the fact that no two women in this epic are alike, each—through her vices or virtues—helps to delineate the role of the ideal woman. Below, we will show the importance of Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa, Clytaemestra, and Penelope in terms of the movement of the narrative and in defining social roles for the Ancient Greeks. Before we delve into the traits of individual characters, it is important to understand certain assumptions about women that prevailed in the Homeric Age. By modern standards, the Ancient Greeks would be considered a rabidly misogynistic culture. Indeed, the notoriously sour Boetian playwright Hesiod-- who wrote about fifty years before Homer-- proclaimed "Zeus who thunders on high made women to be evil to mortal men, with a nature to do evil (Theogony 600).
Over the course of time, the roles of men and women have changed dramatically. As women have increasingly gained more social recognition, they have also earned more significant roles in society. This change is clearly reflected in many works of literature, one of the most representative of which is Plautus's 191 B.C. drama Pseudolus, in which we meet the prostitute Phoenicium. Although the motivation behind nearly every action in the play, she is glimpsed only briefly, never speaks directly, and earns little respect from the male characters surrounding her, a situation that roughly parallels a woman's role in Roman society of that period. Women of the time, in other words, were to be seen and not heard. Their sole purpose was to please or to benefit men. As time passed, though, women earned more responsibility, allowing them to become stronger and hold more influence. The women who inspired Lope de Vega's early seventeenth-century drama Fuente Ovejuna, for instance, rose up against not only the male officials of their tiny village, but the cruel (male) dictator busy oppressing so much of Spain as a whole. The roles women play in literature have evolved correspondingly, and, by comparing The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Wife of Bath's Prologue, we can see that fictional women have just as increasingly as their real-word counterparts used gender differences as weapons against men.
The contrast between men versus women is an important opposition in both plays. The women in the Greek society have no control of their life; the men are in control (Barlow 159). In The Bacchae Dionysus underminded the Greek society point view on women and empowers them. Pentheus is furious about Dionysus; he states in this first speech to his Grandfather Cadmus and Tiresias that the women have betrayed their houses to go off into the mountains to dance to Dionysus and are committing sexual acts (Bacchae 217-224). Pentheus is offended that an “effeminate looking stranger” has come into his land and is giving freedom to the women (353). There is a binary opposition between the way Greek society and Pentheus are treating the women (men) versus the way Dionysus treats them (women).
Many different interpretations can be derived from themes in Euripides's The Bacchae, most of which assume that, in order to punish the women of Thebes for their impudence, the god Dionysus drove them mad. However, there is evidence to believe that another factor played into this confrontation. Because of the trend of male dominance in Greek society, women suffered in oppression and bore a social stigma which led to their own vulnerability in becoming Dionysus's target. In essence, the Thebian women practically fostered Dionysian insanity through their longing to rebel against social norms. Their debilitating conditions as women prompted them to search for a way to transfigure themselves with male qualities in order to abandon their social subordination.
In this essay I will examine the war-of the-sexes taking place in The Eumenides, the final play of The Oresteia. The plot of The Eumenides pits Orestes and Apollo (representing the male gods and, to a certain extent, male values in general) against the ghost of Clytemnestra and the Furies (equally representative of female values.) Of more vital importance, however, is whether Athene sides with the males or females throughout the play.
Aristophanes’ significant contributions in the development of the theater arts and his standing in the Athenian community are well documented. His hilarious comedy, Lysistrata, reflects the disgust with war prevalent at Athens after the disastrous expedition to Sicily. It is ripe with sexual innuendo and provides much insight into the timeliness of human sexuality, desire, and the war of the sexes, yet it was intended to make a political statement regarding the folly of Athenian military aggression. Aristophanes was not suggesting that a sex strike might be an effective means of ending the Peloponnesian War, more likely that the reasons for the war itself were suspect. Lysistrata’s scheme to force the men of Greece to the peace table could never have been successful. Property concerns, gender roles, and the sexuality of Athenian men prevented Athenian women from exerting the necessary political influence.
Aristophane’s Lysistrata is a flawed classic filled with the power struggle between man vs. woman. It is entirely focused and written from the male perspective, in which male-privilege dominated and disregarded the women’s outlook entirely. This “classic” is full of misogynistic perspectives, and should be disregarded as a great piece in Athenian literature.
In Euripides’ play The Bacchae, the ideals that were the foundation of Greek culture were called into question. Until early 400B.C.E. Athens was a society founded upon rational thinking, individuals acting for the good of the populace, and the “ideal” society. This is what scholars commonly refer to as the Hellenic age of Greek culture. As Athens is besieged by Sparta, however, the citizens find themselves questioning the ideals that they had previously lived their lives by. Euripides’ play The Bacchae shows the underlying shift in ideology of the Greek people from Hellenic (or classical), to Hellenistic; the god character Dionysus will be the example that points to the shifting Greek ideology.
“Lysistrata” is a tale which is centered around an Athenian woman named Lysistrata and her comrades who have taken control of the Acropolis in Athens. Lysistrata explains to the old men how the women have seized the Acropolis to keep men from using the money to make war and to keep dishonest officials from stealing the money. The opening scene of “Lysistrata” enacts the stereotypical and traditional characterization of women in Greece and also distances Lysistrata from this overused expression, housewife character. The audience is met with a woman, Lysistrata, who is furious with the other women from her country because they have not come to discuss war with her. The basic premise of the play is, Lysistrata coming up with a plan to put an end to the Peloponnesian War which is currently being fought by the men. After rounding up the women, she encourages them to withhold sex until the men agree to stop fighting. The women are difficult to convince, although eventually they agree to the plan. Lysistrata also tells the women if they are beaten, they may give in, since sex which results from violence will not please the men. Finally, all the women join Lysistrata in taking an oath to withhold sex from their mates. As a result of the women refraining from pleasing their husbands until they stop fighting the war, the play revolves around a battle of the sexes. The battle between the women and men is the literal conflict of the play. The war being fought between the men is a figurative used to lure the reader to the actual conflict of the play which is the battle between men and women.
In the story of Medea, the author, Euripides, addresses the topics of foreignism and female roles in the ancient Greek society. In the play, Medea, a foreign born woman, marries Jason, a Greek man, and moves to Greece to be with him after leaving her homeland with death and devastation. Then, when their marriage fails, Medea lashes out against Jason, causing her own exile and murdering her children, to which she has no love connection, and Jason’s new wife in the process. The main character, Medea, confirms many of the alleged Greek prejudices against foreigners and creates some prejudices of her own in return. Medea’s foreign roots and misconceptions, as well as her familial and societal atrocities,
Medea and Lysistrata are two Greek literatures that depict the power which women are driven to achieve in an aim to defy gender inequality. In The Medea, Medea is battling against her husband Jason whom she hates. On the other hand, in Aristophanes' Lysistrata, the protagonist Lysistrata plotted to convince and organize the female gender to protest against the stubbornness of men. In terms of defining the purpose of these two literatures, it is apparent that Euripedes and Aristophanes created characters that demonstrate resistance against the domination of men in the society.