πρὸς δὲ καὶ πεφύκαμεν γυναῖκες, ἐς μὲν ἔσθλ᾽ ἀμηχανώταται, κακῶν δὲ πάντων τέκτονες σοφώταται / ‘After all, we women are good for nothing – / That’s what they say – except causing trouble.’ – Notes on Euripides’ Medea and Colin Teevan’s The Last Word – II

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1. The Other`s Voices

“Et elle [le femme] n’est rien d’autre que ce que l’homme en décide; ainsi on l’appelle « le sexe », voulant dire par là qu’elle apparaît essentiellement au mâle comme un être sexué pour lui, elle est sexe, donc elle l’est absolument. Elle se détermine et se différencie par rapport à l’homme et non celui-ci par rapport à elle; elle est l’inessentiel en face de l’essentiel. Il est le Sujet, il est l’Absolu elle est l’Autre” 1

1. Cette idée a été exprimée sous sa forme la plus explicite par E. Lévinas dans son essai sur Le Temps et l’Autre. Il s’exprime ainsi «N’y aurait-il pas une situation où l’altérité serait portée par un être à un titre positif, comme essence? Quelle est l’altérité qui n’entre pas purement et simplement dans l’opposition des deux espèces du même genre? Je pense que le contraire absolument contraire, dont la contrariété n’est affectée en rien par la relation qui peut s’établir entre lui et son corrélatif, la contrariété qui permet au terme de demeurer absolument autre, c’est le féminin. Le sexe n’est pas une différence spécifique quelconque. La différence des sexes n’est pas non plus une contradiction. [Elle] n’est pas non plus la dualité de deux termes complémentaires car deux termes complémentaires supposent un tout préexistant. L’altérité s’accomplit dans le féminin. Terme du même rang mais de sens opposé à la conscience. » Je suppose que M. Lévinas n’oublie pas que la femme est aussi pour soi conscience. Mais il est frappant qu’il adopte délibérément un point de vue d’homme sans signaler la réciprocité du sujet et de l’objet. Quand il écrit que la femme est mystère, il sous-entend qu’elle est mystère pour l’homme. Si bien que cette description qui se veut objective est en fait une affirmation du privilège masculin.

I have referred to Simone de Beauvoir`s classic pioneering work for recalling her excellent analysis, in my opinion, of the Other`s political function. She argues the point very cleverly when questioning “How is it, then, that between the sexes this reciprocity has not been put forward, that one of the terms has been asserted as the only essential one, denying any relativity in regard to its correlative, defining the latter as pure alterity? Why do women not contest male sovereignty? No subject posits itself spontaneously and at once as the inessential from the outset; it is not the Other who, defining itself as Other, defines the One; the Other is posited as Other by the One positing itself as One. But in order for the Other not to turn into the One, the Other has to submit to this foreign point of view. Where does this submission in woman come from? ”

But the same thing applies to other forms of the “otherness”, as Simone de Beauvoir also remarks: effectively “blacks”, “jews”, “foreigners”, “homosexuals”, and so on, have been submissively brought as others under the control of the sexual, religious, and ethnocentric dominant position. The key point here is undoubtedly the process of classification –in Michel Foucault`s terms–, applied and put into practice by means of the complex dispositif which maintains the exercise of power.

It is possible, however, to find within the male-dominated world of the ancient Greek society a critical and questioning attitude of mind possessed by major dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides when they raise questions about the centrality of rationality (against the chaotic world of experience), the male-based conception of power and socio-political order (against the potentially threatening different female world), or whatever other ones which can make their male heroes (and masculine audience) [1] face the problem of difference and complexity. Such an attitude is especially conspicuous in Euripides, who –in Sarah B. Pomeroy`s words– “called into question traditional Athenian beliefs and prejudices surrounding foreigners, war, and the Olympian gods” [2] and “he uses the vantage point of misogyny as a means of examining popular beliefs about women” [3]. According to her, it does not seem that Euripides would have intended “his audience simply to accept the misogynistic maxims” [4]. In this regard, Pomeroy`s subjective estimate of Euripides is favorable[5]. In his plays “the double standard in sexual morality is implicit in many of the myths [he] chose as the basis of his plots” [6] and “he is the first author -Sarah B. Pomeroy points out- we know of to look at this topic from both the woman`s and the man`s point of view” [7].

Furthermore, Euripides “shows us women victimized by patriarchy in almost every possible way”: “a girl needs both her virginity and a dowry to attract a husband” (Medea, 230-240; Andromache, 675, 940); “women are raped and bear illegitimate children whom they must discard. The women are blamed, while the men who raped them are not” (Rhesus`mother in Rhesus; Creusa in Ion; Melanippe in (the lost play) Melanippe the Wise);  “when marriages prove unfruitful, wives are inevitably guilty” (Hermione in Andromache; Creusa in Ion); “despite the grimness of marriage, spinster-hood is worse” [1] (Iphigenia in Tauris, 219; The Suppliants, 790-92; Heracleidae, 523, 579-80, 592-93; Medea, 233-34).

Euripides` approaching of female characters within his cultural context was unquestionably a novelty. He dared to present on the stage, by crafting portraits of psychological depth, all of the possible moods and emotions of his tragic heroines: fear, sorrow, despair, longing, hatred, and love complaints. The humanization of character is –as Arthur Zieger states in his Introduction to The Plays of the Greek Dramatists: Selections from Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes [1]– “the essential contribution of Euripides to drama –and it is for this that he has been frequently termed “the father of the modern drama”. Doubtful about the chances for success and compelled, in many cases, by irrational forces their characters have lost the archaic soundness of Aeschylus` and Sophocles` tragic figures. “In the main they are ideal. No place else in the Greek drama –Arthur Zieger points out– are the motives and emotions of the heroes so perspicaciously and penetratingly analyzed as they are in Euripides”. [2]

Not surprisingly, in Aristophanes` Frogs is set Euripides against Aeschylus (in the underworld) in the contest for the “chair” of tragedy art:

Aeschylus
This is the stuff poets should work on. Just look right from the start
how useful the noble race of poets has been.
For Orpheus taught us rites and to refrain from killing,
And Musaeus taught the cures of illness and oracles, and Hesiod
the working of the land, harvest seasons, plowing. Divine Homer,
Where did he get honor and glory if not from teaching useful things,
battle lines, courageous deeds, men’s armory?

Dionysus
But I bet he didn’t
teach Pantacles, that clumsy oaf. The other day, when he was parading,
He fastened his helmet on first and then was going to tie on the crest!

Aeschylus
And many other brave men too, of which the hero Lamachos was one;
from Homer, my brain composed many great feats of valor,
of Patrocluses, lion-hearted Teucrians, so I could rouse the citizenry
to strive to equal them, when it hears the call to arms.
But by God, I never created whores like Phaedra and Sthenoboea
No one’s ever known me to write about any woman in love.

Euripides
No sir, you’ve got nothing to do with Aphrodite.

Aeschylus
And may she stay away!
But she settled down on you and yours in force,
and destroyed your very self.

Dionysus
By God, that she did.
What you used to do to other mens’s wives, you got hit with yourself.

Euripides
And how have my Stheneboeas harmed the state, you wretch?

Aeschylus
Since you persuaded noble ladies, wives of noble men
to drink hemlock out of shame because of people like that Bellerophon of yours.

Euripides
So did I make up some non-existent story about Phaedra?

Aeschylus
No, it existed. But a poet should conceal wickedness, not bring it forward and teach it. For little boys
have a teacher who advises them, and grown-ups have poets.
We have a serious obligation to speak of honorable things.

[Aristophanes, Frogs – 1030-1060] [1]

So did Euripides make-up some non-existent story about his tragic heroines?  No, it existed. But a poet –Aeschylus/ Aristophanes warns– should conceal wickedness, not bring it forward and teach it. For little boys have a teacher who advises them, and grown-ups have poets. We have a serious obligation to speak of honorable things. This is the stuff poets should work on. [Italics mine]

To give voice to the needs, desires, and complaints of raped, betrayed, abandoned, and humiliated passionate women in despair, in a general way victimized by the male-dominated system of values, is not perhaps the stuff poets should work on. Euripides, however, gives the chance to let the Other`s voices be heard. 

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Tomás García

May 2016

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Notes

[1] Beauvoir, Simone de. Le Deuxième Sexe. Paris: Gallimard, 1976 – Tome I : Les faits et les mythes, Introduction, p. 14.

The Second Sex. Translated into English by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, with an introduction by Judith Thurman. New York: Vintage Books, 2009-2010, p. 26.

[2] With regard to the question of Athenian`s women attendance at dramatic performances see Goldhill, Simon (1997). «The audience of Athenian tragedy». In Easterling, P. E. The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Such an issue remains, however, controversial for classicists.

[3] Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. [New York: Schocken Books Inc., 1975] – London: Pimlico, 1994, p. 107.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Regrettably, I cannot discuss her position in detail here.

[7] Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. [New York: Schocken Books Inc., 1975] – London: Pimlico, 1994, p. 110.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid., pp. 110-11.

[9] Zieger, Arthur (ed.). The Plays of the Greek Dramatists: Selections from Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes. Chicago: Puritan Publishing Company, 1954, Introduction: p. xiii.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Aristophanes , Frogs. F.W. Hall and W.M. Geldart, Ed.

Source: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0031%3Acard%3D1006