Part 14 (1/2)
Anyone who makes a careful perusal of the philosophical literature of Athens in the fourth century before our era will be struck with the amount of attention that has been paid to the question of the social and domestic position of woman. If he trace the subject back, he will observe that in the dramatic literature of the latter part of the previous century the same problems received the consideration of Euripides and Aristophanes. And the conviction will be forced upon him that this agitation was rooted in a sociological movement of great import, and that the dramatic and philosophical writers merely gave a literary form to the debates which profoundly stirred Athenian society in the fifth century.
This discussion of woman's rights is a subject of perennial interest, and the underlying currents in such movements are usually the same in every age. They take their rise, too, not in the efforts of philanthropic men who recognize that the status of woman is not what it should be, but in the efforts of the members of the s.e.x themselves, who are sufficiently intelligent to see that they, while having an abundant share of the burdens, have not a fair share of the emoluments of life, and consequently endeavor to better the conditions which environ themselves and their sisters.
In this chapter we shall make a study of the dramatists and philosophers of Athens, in so far as they give insight into the social life of the city in its most important epoch, and outline what they contribute to our knowledge of Greek woman and the ever-present Woman Question.
For the early part of this brilliant period we must rely on the ideal pictures of tragedy for the higher side, and the ribald travesties of comedy for the lower side of feminine life, aeschylus flourished just before and during the glorious period following the Persian War,--the good days before the influx of foreigners and the new education corrupted the life and undermined the faith of the citizens. In his seven extant plays he has presented to us only three feminine characters of any importance,--Clytemnestra, Electra, and Ca.s.sandra,--all belonging to the cycle of tragedies treating of the fate of King Agamemnon and his royal house at Mycenae. The dramatist's pictures of home life show his high conception of the ability and the importance of women and of the large part they play in human history. His Clytemnestra is a ruling queen exercising all the functions of royalty, but her powerful nature has been debased by grief and sin. She identifies herself with the ”ancient bitter Alastor,” who visits on Agamemnon the curse of his house. She is self-sufficingness, adamantine purpose, studied craft, and cold disdain incarnate. With fulsome speech and consummate flattery she welcomes her husband home; and when the deed is done and he lies dead by her hand, in exultant tones she rejoices in the blood upon her robe as ”a cornfield in the dews of spring.” Truly she is the most powerful portrait of feminine guilt that dramatic literature affords us. aeschylus drew his scenery and his characters largely from the conditions of the Heroic Age as pictured by Homer, and was little affected by the current of everyday life about him.
As aeschylus has given us Clytemnestra for an ideal type of feminine power and wickedness, so Sophocles has presented two immortal heroines, Antigone and Electra, who are statuesque in the beauty and grandeur of their characters. In Antigone we observe two fundamental qualities,--enthusiasm in the performance of duty, and intensity of domestic affection, as seen in her efforts to reconcile her brothers, Polynices and Eteocles, her desire to s.h.i.+eld her sister Ismene, her self-sacrifice for the sake of her brother Polynices, and her filial devotion to her aged father. Electra also is an ideal type of sisterly love. Ill-treated by her unnatural mother, abused by the cowardly and brutal tyrant who had usurped her father's place, only one ray of hope was left her, that her brother Orestes would return to avenge their wrongs upon the guilty pair. When the deed is done, and Orestes is pursued by the Furies, she proves herself a devoted and unselfish sister. In these two characters we have sublime conceptions of heroic devotion to duty, but the more human womanly traits have been lost in the poet's delineation of them as the embodiment of lofty ideals.
Mahaffy finds in these two heroines something hard and masculine, traits which would not stir the sympathies of the reader or hearer and lead to emulation. He prefers Sophocles's Deianira and Tecmessa as being ”truly 'female women,' as Homer would say, gentle and loving, not above jealousy, and for that reason a finer and clearer contrast to the heroes than are the coa.r.s.er and more dominant heroines.” ... ”If these criticisms be just,” he adds, ”they will show that, in the most perfect and exclusive Athenian society--that is to say, among Thucydides's and Sophocles's set, the ideal of female character had degenerated; that to these men, whose affections were centred on very different objects, the notion of a true heroine was no longer natural, but was supplanted by a hard and masculine type. The old free, n.o.ble woman, whom aeschylus had, in early days, still known, was banished from their city life to make way for the domestic slave of the Attic household, called 'mistress,'
but as such contrasted with the 'companions,' who gradually supplanted her in Athenian society.”
The types of womanhood presented by aeschylus and Sophocles belonged to a state of society which had pa.s.sed away, and were too remote from the life of their own day to be ideals for the daughters of Athens. These dramatists did not touch upon the problems which were then engaging the thoughts of enlightened men and women. There is nothing in aeschylus, absorbed as he was in the problems of destiny, to show that he felt the many weighty problems that confronted the social life of his time; and the serene Sophocles gives no hint that the world about him was not the best of all possible worlds. But how was it with the sombre and melancholy Euripides? What insight does he give us into the social life of the times?
There was a famous saying of Sophocles that ”he himself represented men as they ought to be--Euripides, men as they are.” This means that Euripides, while making the old legends the foundation of his tragedies, attributed to his heroes and heroines the faults and pa.s.sions of ordinary men and women and utilized his plots to present the problems which confronted society as he knew it. As a follower of Anaxagoras and a member of the party of philosophers, he was dissatisfied with the conditions of life about him, and endeavored, through his dramas, to a.s.sist the movements for reform. He was, in many respects, a daring innovator, and this explains the bitter hostility which Aristophanes, the ultra-conservative, exhibited toward him. The glaring fault in Athenian social life was the status of woman, and to the solution of this problem Euripides bent all his energies. He used woman and the moral conflicts originating through the relations of the s.e.xes as a _motif_ for his poetry, and the whole body of his plays is a commentary on the Woman Question. He found in the portrayal of woman a new field for his genius, as well as a new means of advocating an unpopular but righteous cause.
Yet we are confronted by the prevailing opinion that Euripides was a woman hater who utilized his tragedies to present his unfavorable opinion of the s.e.x. This view, presented by many modern writers, rests, however, on false a.s.sumptions. To exhibit the low views of woman held by the men of his day, the poet attributes to certain of his characters condemnations of the s.e.x as a whole; and these are taken to be expressions of the personal opinion of the author. Thus Hippolytus engages in a lengthy tirade beginning:
”Why hast thou given a home beneath the sun, Zeus, unto woman, specious curse to man?”
[Ill.u.s.tration 232 _PHRYNE After the painting by Henry I. Siemiradsky.
Phryne, with a modesty one would not expect in a woman of her cla.s.s, was very careful to keep her beautiful figure concealed, avoiding the public baths and having her body always enveloped in a long and graceful tunic.
But on two occasions the beauty-loving Greeks had displayed to them the charms of her person. The fist was at the solemn a.s.sembly at Eleusis, on the feast of the Poseidonia. Having loosened her beautiful hair and let fall her drapery, Phryne plunged into the sea in the sight of all the a.s.sembled Greeks._
_Phryne was of very humble origin, and originally obtained her livelihood by gathering capers; but her beauty afterward gained great wealth for her. At Delphi there was erected a statue in gold of her._]
But Hippolytus throughout is characterized as a p.r.o.nounced misogynist, and this and similar pa.s.sages found their inspiration in the characters and the situation and produce a well-defined dramatic effect.
Furthermore, while the poet's unfavorable opinions of women are frequently cited out of their connection, his complimentary expressions are lost sight of. In contrast to the harsh criticisms of men who vent their spleen against those whom they have injured, or of women who find fault with their s.e.x where the dramatic purpose justifies the expressions used, there can be cited pa.s.sages in which maidenly modesty and wifely fidelity are commended; or one might quote the deeply emotional words of Admetus or Theseus concerning the joys of happy married life, or the tender expressions which fathers, like Agamemnon, utter in reference to their daughters. In the fragments also occur pa.s.sages friendly and unfriendly to woman, but, as these are without their context, it is difficult to judge them fairly. Hence the conclusion from a study of the dialogues of Euripides is that every unfavorable judgment of woman finds its full justification in the economy of the drama; nowhere is there convincing indication that the poet himself had any hatred for the s.e.x.
If we turn from the dialogues to the choruses, we may expect to find the author's true opinions, and here occur no traces whatever of unfriendly criticism. Male choruses sing of the unbounded happiness which is gained in the possession of a good wife; female choruses sing of entrancing love, of the blessings of a happy married life, while faithlessness and sinful pa.s.sion are condemned. They refer at times to evil report concerning women, but always with indignation and in manifest effort to correct a wrong judgment. Thus, for example, the chorus of the _Ion_:
”Mark--ye whose strains of slander Scourge evermore Woman in song, and brand her Wanton and wh.o.r.e,-- How high in virtue's place We pa.s.s men's lawless race, Nor spit in viper-lays your venom-store.
But let the Muse of taunting On men's heads pour Her indignation, chanting Her treason-lore; Sing of the outraged maid; Tell of the wife betrayed Of him who hath displayed his false heart's core--”
The nature of the characters of Euripides is the most important of all the testimony of the plays as evidence of the social life of Athens, since the poet drew them from real life, and consequently his men and his women are necessarily fair specimens of the men and women to be found in Athenian society. It is noticeable that the men are, as a rule, far inferior to the women, both in manners and in n.o.bility of character, and are not to be compared with the heroes of aeschylus and Sophocles.
Hippolytus is indeed a notable example of youthful purity; Pylades, of unselfish friends.h.i.+p; Achilles, of courtly chivalry; Ion, of youthful piety; Theseus, of devoted patriotism; and the peasant husband of Electra, of knightly regard; but the majority of the male characters are selfish, quarrelsome, and ordinary. How different do we find the case when we consider the dramatist's women!
Differing from his countrymen in the conception of the character, capabilities, and rights of woman, Euripides has in his plays presented ideals of a womanhood which would give woman something higher to live for than the drudgery of household duties, and would raise the s.e.x in the estimation of men. Heroism in everyday life is the lesson he constantly teaches by the examples of such women as Alcestis, the devoted wife and mother; as Polyxena, the brave martyr-maiden; as Andromache, faithful in thraldom to the memory of her valiant husband; as Macaria and Iphigenia, sacrificing themselves for the sake of a great cause; and as Electra, the devoted sister. Nowhere can one find a longer catalogue of n.o.ble women, not heroines of prehistoric days living in a golden age, but women who in character and sentiments were like to those met with every day in every community. Euripides's heart was burdened by the sorrows and wrongs of the s.e.x; and he combated the social system which was at the root of the evil, not by violent a.s.saults upon it, not by seeking to overturn that which was the product of centuries and was a natural result of the Greek idea of the city-state, but by showing women how they could better their condition and by giving men more exalted ideas of the nature of woman. Says Mr. Arthur S. Way, the translator and ardent advocate of Euripides, who, of all Greek scholars, has most profoundly and sympathetically investigated this question:
”Euripides set himself to appeal to human hearts as he found them, to exalt men's estimate of woman, to redeem women from despair of themselves, by uplifting before them inspiring ideals of womanhood which might be types and examples for all time. And, first, he gave them those transcendent four--who in the union of the sweetness and lovable gentleness of the pure womanly with the magnificent exaltation of the highest heroism are unapproached by Homer's Penelope and Andromache, or by Sophocles's Antigone. He gave them Alcestis, who surrendered her life freely, not so much for her husband as for wifely duty's sake, and never flinched nor faltered as the horror of great darkness swallowed her up, but by strength of a mother's love stayed up the feet that were sinking into Hades, till her dying breath had made her children's future sure, and then in death's grasp quietly laid her hand, and so was drawn down, faintly and ever more faintly murmuring love. He gave them Iphigenia, who, summoned from the cloistered shelter of her home as to a bridal, found herself set without warning before the altar of death, and yet shrank and shuddered only till the full import of the great sacrifice demanded dawned upon her, and then sprang full-statured to the height of a G.o.dlike resolve; who grasped in her pure hands the scales of national justice, who bore up with her slender wrists the fate of her fatherland, and sang the triumph pasan of h.e.l.las as she paced to death. He gave them Macaria, who attained a height of selfless heroism unimagined till that hour, in that unasked she gave her life for the salvation of a n.o.ble house and of alien helpers; who refused to hearken to the suggestion which whispered a hope of escape, but with unreverted eyes turned from all joys and all hopes of young life, and spent her last breath in consolation and encouragement to those who clung with adoring love and pa.s.sionate tears about her parting feet. He gave them Polyxena, the most pathetic figure of all, sustained by no proud consciousness of salvation wrought from suffering, but only welcoming death as an angel of deliverance from shame and long regrets, who stood on the grave-mound, arrayed in spotless innocence, with modest lips that calmly made in the name of honor their last request, and so gave her throat to the sword, while the fierce men who but now had clamored for her blood acclaimed her of all maidens n.o.blest of soul.
”He brought before them women in all the relations of life, everywhere surpa.s.sing the men in goodness, in constancy, in wisdom, in counsel.
They watched the ministering angel who sat by a brother's bed, and wiped the dew of agony from his brow and the foam of madness from his lips; they held their breath while a gentle-hearted priestess bemoaned to her unknown brother the cruel destiny which even then drew her to the verge of fratricide. They saw the wife who hailed a death of fire to be reunited to her slain lord, and the wife who devoted herself to save, or die with, her husband. They heard one mother plead the cause of honor and right against cold statecraft; they listened as another besought her doomed sons to be reconciled. They thrilled beholding the princess-slave whose love was stronger than death and whose highborn spirit flashed defiance to a treacherous foe; and that other, who, remembering her hero-husband, would not suffer the imminent death to make herself or her children play a craven part, but mingled proud scorn of the murderous usurper with regrets for hopes foregone. In the n.o.ble words of Professor Mahaffy: 'These are the women who have so raised the ideal of the s.e.x, that in looking upon them the world has pa.s.sed from neglect to courtesy, from courtesy to veneration; these are they, who, across many centuries, first of frivolity and sensuality, then of rudeness and barbarism, join hands with the ideals of our religion and our chivalry, the martyred saints, the chaste and holy virgins of romance--nay, more, with the true wives, the devoted mothers, of our own day.'
”But there are female characters in his plays which have been pointed to as proving a very different att.i.tude toward women. Of these, Phaedra was the best-abused by his enemies, who wilfully shut their eyes to her true character. She is, by the very plot of the play, the helpless victim of the malice of a G.o.ddess. With her brain beclouded by fever frenzy, she agonizes for clear vision and wails for peace of mind. She is a pure-souled, true-hearted woman, who tingles with shame and shudders with horror at the hideous thing that has been born in her. She is driven by the imminence of ruin to a desperate expedient to s.h.i.+eld her name from the unmerited dishonor which she might well believe, from the ambiguously worded threat with which Hippolytus departed, was to be cast upon her. He gave her cause to think that he would accuse her to his father of a crime of which she knew herself innocent. In her despair, she saw no help but to forestall him by an accusation equally false.
”Medea and Creusa--even Clytemnestra and Hermione--are not portrayed as transgressors without excuse: in each case, the audience heard the woman plead her cause and proclaim the doctrine that woman has rights as well as man, that what man avenges as the inexpiable wrong is not a light offence against her. It may well be that they were not ripe for the reception of ideas so unheard-of, that many of them mistook his drift; but the seed sank in, to bear fruit in due time.
”In each instance the sinner is a woman deeply wronged, or in sore straits, or under daemoniac influence: there are no such gratuitously wicked characters as Goneril, Lady Macbeth, or Tamora. Yet no one calls Shakespeare a misogynist. Why, then, was it possible for Euripides's enemies to charge him with being one, a charge doubtless echoed by a good many thoughtless and stupid people in his day, but little creditable to modern scholars.h.i.+p? For three reasons: first, the wilful or obtuse misunderstanding of such characters as Phaedra--the representation of these by Euripides was the main ground on which Aristophanes alleged that the tendency of his plays was immoral.
Secondly, we occasionally come upon the censures of the faults and foibles of women--their p.r.o.neness to scandal, to uncharitable judgments of their fellows, their pettiness, frivolity, and so forth. It must be admitted, too, that the context sometimes justifies us in concluding that the poet is uttering his own sentiments. It was, indeed, to be expected that a thinker who had so high a conception of what women might be should be painfully impressed by the contrast presented by what they too often were. Nor is it matter for wonder that he should take opportunities of bringing the same feeling home to them. It is not enough to set n.o.ble ideals before people who are not yet conscious of the incompatibility of their present habits and aims with the emulation of those ideals. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, as indeed these were, compared with the hideous presentments of female morality in which Aristophanes revels, till his readers might imagine that pure and temperate women were quite the exception in the Athens of his day. And was he not a friend to women who gave, for the sake of his sisters for whom heroic ideals might seem set too high, this winsome model, 'not too fair and good for human nature's daily food'?