I assure you, ladies, my getting up to speak like this isn’t from any desire to push myself forward, it’s just that I can no longer bear to sit by and see us women besmirched with mud from head to foot by this cabbage-woman’s son Euripides. The things he says about us! Is there any crime he hasn’t tried to smear us with? Give him a stage and a theatre full of people, and does he ever fail to come out with his slanders? Calling us intriguers, strumpets, tipplers, deceivers, gossips, rotten to the core, and a curse to mankind. (The Poet and the Women 1964: 113)

If this long speech from Aristophanes’ playful Thesmophoriazusae is any indication, Euripides had a reputation for being a misogynist among his contemparies. His tragedies were said to depict women at their worst, and to reinforce the popular stereotypes about them. The women in this comedy held him responsible for the mistrust their husbands feel towards them, and blame him for their lack of freedom. If this is the case, his plays are valuable texts in helping us understand the way that femininity was constructed in Athens, and in resolving the longstanding debate about the position of women in the polis. After all, the attitude that men had towards women would have determined what type of laws they made concerning them and how much civil freedom they allowed them.

For a long time, scholarly opinion appeared to be sharply divided on this issue. Initially, academics, using sources from tragedy, art and myth, believed that the position of women was not so bad. Taking strong, liberated figures, like Medea or Clytemnestra, they concluded that women were allowed a great deal of freedom. During the strongly feminist climate of the Sixties and Seventies, however, this belief was questioned by other scholars. They looked at more factual material, like legal, philosophical and medical texts, and they deduced that women were greatly oppressed from them. In recent times, academics have tried to find an intermediate view that reconciled all the sources. Part of that reconcilatory project was revisiting the texts that the earlier scholars had used, such as tragedies, and attempting to see what sort of attitudes underpinned them. In this essay, I wish to do precisely that. Using Euripides’ Hippolytus as my source, I shall analyse the construction of femininity within the play and attempt to show how it can shed light on male attitudes towards Athenian women that would have informed the position they were accorded in their society.

Turning to the text, therefore, the most obvious example of the manner in which femininity is depicted in the play is Hippolytus’ long, misogynistic diatribe against women:

O Zeus! Why have you plagued this world with so vile and worthless a thing as woman? If it was your pleasure to plant a mortal stock, why must women be the renewers of the race? . . . For an easy life, marry a nobody, and keep her worthless and witless on a pedestal. I hate a woman who is clever - a woman who thinks more than becomes a woman; I would not have her in my house.! For passion engenders wickedness the more readily in clever women; while the simple are kept from wantonness by lack of wit. . . . As it is, unchaste wives sit at home scheming lechery, while their servants traffic their schemes to the world . . . Curse the whole race of you! I can never hate you enough. (Hippolytus 1953: 46-47)

This speech touches on most of the popular beliefs about femininity. He acknowledges bitterly that women may be necessary for the propagation of the race, but that they are a necessary evil. They should be kept ignorant and secluded from all contact, or they will become scheming and unfaithful. The first part is particularly interesting for our study of Athenian women, however. From the little we do know, women were barely educated, and they were sequestered within their homes. Men were not allowed to see or visit them, unless they were a member of their immediate family. Could a similar line of reasoning to Hippolytus’ argument have informed the Athenian law-makers and the social mores?

Even though this is an intriguing line of speculation, it is not very useful until we can back it up with other evidence from the text. Hippolytus is a single character, and an extreme one at that. As Aphrodite complains about him:

Hippolytus, alone among the inhabitants of Troezen,

Calls me the most pernicious of the heavenly powers;

He abhors the bed of love; marriage he renounces;

Honours Apollo’s sister, Artemis daughter of Zeus. (Hippolytus 1953: 28)

From the opening speech, he is characterised as a misogynist, who chooses to remain celibate, rather than have sex or get married. To the Athenians, this attitude would have been unusual. Being sexually active was seen as so natural and necessary for men that state brothels were instituted under Solon to provide an outlet for those impulses. Consequently, it is difficult to see Hippolytus as being a representative of Athenian, male views about women, and we must find other proof to back up the validity of his statements.

In order to so, it is useful to consider how Phaedra is characterised within the play. Initially, her characterisation seems very positive. She is chaste and faithful to Theseus, despite the violent manner in which he took her as his wife, and she is devoted to her children. She seems to have been intelligent, as suggested by Hippolytus’ barb about clever women. As importantly, she is a woman with a strong sense of honour, who is properly repulsed by her guilty feelings for Hippolytus, when they are stirred in her by Aphrodite. She is so disgusted by her love for him, that she resolves to commit suicide in order to prevent herself from sinning and bringing shame upon her household:

Whatever woman first was false to her husband with other men, misery and death destroy her! . . . I hate women whose tongues talk of chastity, who in secret are bold in every sin. . . . Friends, it is for this I am dying, that I may never be found guilty of disgracing my husband and my children. . . To live burdened with the secret of a parent’s sin will enslave the boldest spirit. (Hippolytus 1953: 39-40)

This speech has to be seen as standing in direct opposition to Hippolytus’ diatribe that all women are faithless and care nothing for reputation. At first glance, it appears to be a refutation of the stereotypes, and a plea for a newer, fairer perception of femininity.

However, when we examine the presuppositions underlying this speech, a very different view of women emerges. Phaedra chooses to commit suicide because she feels she cannot control her feelings for Hippolytus, and that she is doomed to commit incest with him. . She tells the chorus that she tried ‘to endure this madness as I ought, by overcoming it with self-control. Finally, when I still did not succeed in mastering this love, I determined that the best plan for me, beyond all contradiction, was to die.’ (Hippolytus 1953: 39) This goes directly back to the stereotype that women are governed by their lusts, that they are weak, emotional creatures who cannot subordinate their desires to their intellect or conscience. This must have been the reasoning behind the social system that secluded them, as I have already mentioned.

Moreover, any positive characterisation of Phaedra is undercut in an instant by the letter which she leaves for Theseus to find after her death. (We know it is written by her, because it is sealed with her signet ring.) In it, she tells him that Hippolytus has violated her honour, which implies that was why she committed suicide. It is hard to see this note as anything but her petty, spiteful revenge on Hippolytus from beyond the grave. She knows her death is the ultimate piece of evidence in her favour, and Theseus will believe the veracity of her words because of it. This desire to punish him for rejecting her is completely at odds with her earlier disgust about her feelings and her anger at her nurse for revealing them to Hippolytus, so we have to ask why Euripides chose to include this detail.

The most obvious reason is that he was working from a source. That is, he was using an older story as the basis for his play, which had Phaedra kill herself out of despair and rage at being rejected by Hippolytus and not in order to avoid shame and pollution. She was originally the agent of the tragedy, not an equal victim of Aphrodite. Euripides must have found this unsatisfying on a dramatic level, and reworked it to make the tragedy extend to all three, main characters. However, in order for Theseus to curse Hippolytus and the rest of the tragedy to unfold, he had to place that letter in Phaedra’s hand. From a narrative point of view, it is certainly a necessary inclusion.

From a gender perspective, it certainly ties in which the stereotype of woman as troublemaker and as cause of all the problems in society. Euripides was a man both of his city and his times, and the notion of woman as causing problems for men was firmly entrenched in the Athenian psyche. According to Pomeroy, this view underpins the oppressive legislation towards women that Solon instituted in Athens:

These regulations, which seem at first glance antifeminist, are actually aimed at eliminating strife among men and strengthening the newly created democracy. Women are a perennial source of friction among men. Solon’s solution to this problem was to keep them out of sight and to limit their influence. (Pomeroy 1975:57)

This attitude can be seen working in the play. It is Phaedra’s lying letter that leads Theseus to curse Hippolytus, which results in the boy’s death. It is her lust for Hippolytus that lies behind the tragedy. Clearly, Hippolytus can be read as a warning against the trouble which women bring.

Nonetheless, even though Phaedra is the troublemaker in the play, she is also the victim of the trouble caused by Aphrodite. The nurse laments that ‘Here is a pure-hearted woman, with no desire to do wrong, yet lusting after wickedness against her own will’ (Hippolytus 1953: 38). The audience is meant to be feel as much pity for her as they do for any other character. This is characteristic of Euripides, who often presents a play in a manner sympathetic to the female characters, which suggests his reputation for misogyny may have been undeserved. The Women of Troy, where he has women like Hecabe and Andromache voice the pain of losing their loved ones and being taken off into concubinage, is the prime example of this. It is still considered one of the most powerful and detailed examinations of the effects war has on women. Moreover, he rewrites tragedies in such a way as to transform the role of the women in them. For example, his Medea portrays Jason as the weak, powerhungry villain of the piece, whereas Medea is the victim of his actions. Even her murder of her children is portrayed in terms of love. She kills them because she will not ‘suffer (her) children to be slain by another hand less kindly to them’ (Medea 1944: 1238-1239). As I have already stated, our sympathies are almost always with Phaedra in Hippolytus, rather than her priggish and cruel stepson.

However, the question must be asked as to whether the role of victim is better than the role of villian. Both views can be found in this play, as the chorus sings of the former view of women:

But women are always weak, and their ways are strange;

Their very being is a blend of terror and helplessness

At their pains and follies their sex inherits.

I have felt this fear thrill through my own womb (Hippolytus 1953: 32)

No conscientised person would say that the construction of woman as damsel in distress is any more enlightened than the woman-hating one Hippolytus voices. Indeed, it seems to have been the other reason behind the deeply oppressive legislation directed towards women in Athens. Namely, women need to be protected, because they are essentially weak and helpless. This was the reasoning behind the legislation that ensured women could never attain their majority and had to be under the protection of a kyrios throughout their lives. It also was the justification for the dowry that cast women in the role of goods in a commercial transaction, even as it claimed to prevent them from abuse and exploitation.

Therefore, as I have tried to show in this essay, literary texts like Hippolytus are invaluable when it comes to determining the position of women in Athenian society. As I have already stated, attitudes towards women determine laws made about women. And there is no better source for determining those attitudes than literary works, which are steeped in the prejudices and the presuppositions of the author. If women were seen as dangerous troublemakers or as weak victims, then the laws would have reflected that view by simultaneously controlling and protecting them, which was certainly the case in Athens. In this way, by tracing how femininity is constructed within the text and by seeing what the characters say about women, we can gain some knowledge of the construction of and views about gender in actual society.

Bibliography:

D. Barrett, 1964 (transl.). Aristophanes’ The Poet and the Women. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

S. Pomeroy, 1975. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves. New York: Shocken.

P. Vellacott, 1954 (transl.). Euripides’ The Women of Troy. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

P. Vellacott, 1953 (transl.). Euripides’ Hippolytus. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

R. Warner, 1944 (transl.). Euripides’ Medea. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.