Theme Of Women In The Iliad

In the classic poem The Iliad there are a wide arrange of women portrayed. It has women from the strongest to the weakest. For a poem that is centered in male dominate time, women take center stage in the poem. The women captured in the course of the war were considered rewards. Other women of good birthrights were considered valuable. They were worth more to the families. Then there were Goddess whose help sometimes just made things worse. Helen is considered the most beautiful women in the world. As beautiful as a Goddess. She is married to a man she doesn’t love. She ends up with Paris, the prince of Trojan. Helen did not follow the matrimonial standards of that time. During this period, women did what their fathers or husbands wanted them to do. Whether she was happy or not did not matter. Helen is seen as a

Women did what the men in their life wanted them to do. They did what they were told. When Helen is believed to have left to be with a Trojan prince, she is considered a Spartan whore. Andromache is viewed as the opposite of Helen. She would do anything her husband Hector asked. Chryseis and Briseis are no more than sex slaves to be taken and traded as needed. Thetis is a goddess of the sea, but more importantly, she is the mother of Achilles. Thetis would have done whatever was necessary to keep her son happy. Athena was a peacemaker within the Greeks keeping Achilles from killing Agamemnon. Athena and Hera both took the side of the Greeks. The goddess Aphrodite took the Trojan side. She was the goddess that promised Helen to Paris in the beginning. The women in this poem seem to have just as much influence as the men. They were meant to help the men of the story, nothing more. “Yet in the background are a myriad of women who are used as pawns by these men in order to assert power (Umich.edu).” The goddess interfered whenever they could, but in the end the outcome was still the