The Social Position of the Athenian Woman

Domestic Tasks (Attic Red-Figure Kylix, ca 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, ).  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, 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 BCE: Heracles battles Amazons

Aphrodite (ca BCE ; marble from Benghazi, eastern Libya)