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Aristophanes essays on the play Lysistrata
How does aristophanes - lysistrata reflect the role of women
Influence of classical mythology on literature
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There are many ways in which the men’s carrying the logs and the fire and the women’s carrying the water symbolize the views gender. As one may realize fire is often uncontrollable and wild similar to a men’s raging hormones. Fire is an example of an element that can be easily started, but extremely tricky to put out when spread. When pertaining to sex, the male gender is often the aggressor whose fire is quickly growing to the point of restlessness as Cinesias was. “God, I wish she’d hurry up and get through with all this!” As his wife goes to retrieve a pillow for him and perfume for herself he screams out, “Damn the man who invented perfumes!”
Though the men represent the elusive fire that may sometimes seem impossible to put it out, the women represent the most illustrious enemy of fire: water. Though generally cool and collected, water can be used as the ultimate adversary of a fire that is going about wildly. Pertaining to women, they hold the only solution to the raging fire of a man. As in the play Lysistrata, women actually have the authority to stop a war between ...
The imagery of fire continues in the story; the building of their fires, how the man molds the fires, and how they stoke the fire. When the boy gets sick the father is referred to many times of how he builds and rekindles the fire. This actual fire is a symbol for the fire that the man and the boy discuss carrying within in them. The man fights to save his son and the fire within the boy
The very creation of women was set as a punishment to man because Prometheus, son of Iapetos, tried to trick Zeus into eating bones and then, with the tube of a fennel, steals fire to give to mankind. Zeus then proclaimed, "To set against the fire I shall give them an affliction in which they will all delight as they embrace their own misfortune." Out of Zeus' anger came Pandora, the first woman. Zeus ordered Hephaestus to mold women from the earth and water, Athene to dress and adorn her, Temptation to give her necklaces of gold, and Hermes to implant a bitch's mind and a thief's temper. Hesiod describes women as a "precipitous trap, more than mankind can manage." Hesiod states, "even so as a bane for mortal men has high-thundering Zeus created women, conspirators in causing difficulty." And thus the first woman was named Pandora, Allgift,-"a calamity for men who live by bread." And so Pandora and all the evils of the world, except Hope, were released into the world by a punishing Zeus. Hesiod explains how formerly the tribes of men lived "remote from ills, without harsh toil and the grievous sickness that are deadly to men." From Pandora descended the female sex, "a great affliction to mortals as they dwell with their husbands- no fit partners for accursed Poverty, but only for Plenty." An analogy is then used to compare women to drones who, according to Hesiod, feed off hard-working bees all day. Hesiod immed...
Society is constructed of people living together, were many ideas and stereotypical ideas are laid out. Based on the norms that were created, men and women try to act and perform the duties, where others who don’t seem different from that society. People’s ideas and concepts allow work and other activities to be placed into categories based on whether it is feminine or if it is masculine and only men can perform that task. Similarly, in the short story “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston the protagonist Delia Jones, is both masculine and feminine because of the roles she has taken as a worker and a wife in her marriage relationship explaining how a women can possess both qualities that traditional men and women have.
Mortal females cause struggles among men and are portrayed as wicked in Greek Mythology. In the story of How the World and Mankind Were Created, the Father of Men and of the Gods, Zeus, swears to get revenge upon mankind because of the poor sacrifices made to the altars. Therefore, he “[makes] a great evil for men, a sweet and lovely thing to look upon… they [call] her Pandora… the first woman… who are an evil to men, with a nature to do evil… is the source of all misfortu...
Despite the contrast in the characters of Euripedes' Medea and Aristophanes' Lysistrata, the two playwrights depicted how gender inequality can start a fire. As with Medea and Jason, the battle between the two lead to former's madness, leading to the death of the enemies she considered, and, unfortunately, leading as well to the death of her own children. Medea felt betrayed and left behind by her husband Jason, as well as continuously aggravated by Creon despite the fact that i...
Although ancient Greece was a male-dominate society, Sophocles' work Antigone, portrays women as being strong and capable of making wise decisions. In this famous tragedy, Sophocles uses the characters Ismene and Antigone to show the different characteristics and roles that woman are typical of interpreting. Traditionally women are characterized as weak and subordinate and Ismene is portrayed in this way. Through the character of Antigone, women finally get to present realistic viewpoints about their character.
The Role of Women in Greek Mythology In learning about the feminist movement, we studied the three articles, discussed and reviewed the different authors perspectives on the topic, and learned how important the role of woman in Greek mythology is. In presenting the feminist theory to the class, we analyzed the three articles, Women in Ancient Greece; Women in Antiquity: New Assessments; and Women in Greek Myth, and discussed how although the three articles provided different views on Feminism in mythology, they all essentially are aiming to teach the same basic concept. In order to understand the feminist theory, we have to understand the notion that although myths are invented and that they involve fantasy, the concept of mythology does not necessarily imply that there is no truth of history in them. Some of the humans may have lived while some of the events may have taken place. Most importantly, the social customs and the way of life depicted in the myths are a valuable representation of Greek society.
Aristophanes stereotypes women as bickering, self-centered, unintelligent people in the beginning. They are sex driven and selfish. Lysistrata is upset that the women are late for the very important meeting "Here I've called a meeting to discuss a very important matter, and they're all still fast asleep" (180). Calonice sums up what women are thought to do all day, and also what they represent to their households; "The women! What could they ever do that was any use? Sitting at home putting flowers in their hair, putting on cosmetics and saffron gowns and Cimberian see-through shifts, with slippers on our feet?" (181). It is in fact these very frivolous ideas that are used to bring peace to the two cities. Throughout the play Aristophanes begins to knock down ...
“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.
The story illustrates the relationship between men and women on an exceptional level and the problems that arise through a male dominated society. It also demonstrates how men believe women are incredibly vain and care greater regarding material things, such as if food preserves are fine or if something is clean. The men laugh at the women and treat them as if they are their inferiors throughout the story. One man even makes a sexist comment about being loyal to her sex after she offers to clean something up for him (7). This is revealed when “there was a laugh for the ways of women (12)” after they discover something that seemed highly trivial but, in actuality, is greatly important. This happens numerous times in the story and receives the same response each time. Nonetheless, the women are not discouraged by the negative responses and continue on to find the actual outcome of the
The brutal war between the Achaean and Trojan armies and the consequences of these battles are vividly depicted by Homer in The Iliad. Although the author crafted this story during a period of complex civilization, Homer’s descriptions give insight into just how primitive the people of his time still remained. Fire, one of society’s earliest tools, is an image that is used to portray the perpetual rage of various characters that drives the action of the story forward. Besides the metaphorical use of fire, it is also appears materially, and its frequent appearance throughout the story communicates the underlying concern with control and power that Homerian characters struggle to claim for themselves and their people.
This can be seen in Hesiod’s Theogony when he states, “For from her comes the race of female women: for of her is the deadly race and tribe of women, a great woe for mortals, dwelling with men, no companions of baneful poverty but only of luxury.” Women are seen as foolish creatures that only led to trouble. Hence, Pandora, the first woman given to mankind, gave in to her curiosity and opened the tempting storage jar that held all the miseries and evil in the world. She closed the jar just in time to save hope from escaping, but it was too late to save mankind from the rest of the wicked
The Hymn to Demeter (HH 2) and Aeschylus’s trilogy, Oresteia, portray the ancient Greek view that female character and behavior pose a danger to men and that women need to be controlled by them. This notion manifests differently in respect to gods and humans. Clytemnestra, a human, violates gender roles as she threatens the order brought by men while Demeter, a goddess, conforms to them.
Throughout the course of human events, many truths have been held self-evident, that all men are created equal. That doesn’t account for about fifty percent of the human population: women. Women have been degraded and treated as evil pariahs, not only in the real world, but also through works fiction. Every culture has evil women or women that are responsible for great catastrophes, while men were portrayed as saviors. Other women still were portrayed as petty and jealous, especially the Greek and Roman goddesses that many feminists look at to show that women were not always treated unfairly. These acts of fiction parallel the views we see in both of the books that we read in our English class.
The poem “Iliad,” by Homer, is known for its violence between men during a war, but under that violence, is the different type of women who play a significant role in the poem (Homer 189). This poem’s narrative seems to show a male dominated world between the Greek commanders. This male dominated world cannot happen on its own, thus the different background roles of women are needed in order to make sense of all this rage. As the University of Michigan article How Do Women Make Their Way Into This Cycle states, “They are seen as the objects of both lust and domesticity, yet they are also used to excuse war, cause conflict, and display the power of men” (www.umich.edu). The focus in this poem steers towards the rage between the men, but this rage most of the time is inspired and initiated by a woman. The women of Iliad play a significant role in the poem such as war prizes, male hero partners, and women gods.