ABSTRACT
What kind of influence could women wield in fifth-century Athens, given that they were, in some ways, defined as outside the polis? In this essay, I discuss that question, with specific reference to Greek tragedy; the female characters of tragedy are omnipresent, even dominant, in contrast to the situation of actual historical women (cf. Gagarin 2001: 161-2). Although in theory, and perhaps in practice, Athenian women were relegated to the home or private sphere, that boundary was unstable and required cultural work to reinscribe it. The tragic festival was one place where that work went on. In this essay I explore two potential sites of female influence – one the ancient production of tragedy, and the other feminist re-readings in the present. I will argue that though tragedy was consistent with the other institutions of democracy in excluding women, it also produced women as characters who were central and who wielded considerable political power. In the cases of Clytemnestra and Medea, their influence is construed as dangerous to the city and in need of control, in order to reaffirm the public/private dichotomy that their power undermines. Thus, I see female excursions into the public in Attic tragedy as signs of the dangerous strength of women. If we define women’s influence as political, then, we have to see it as negative. As I will show, contemporary feminists can, however, make use of that influence in other ways by reading against the grain.
