ABSTRACT
At the core of the festival there remains the dissolution of the family, the separation of the sexes, and the constitution of a society of women; once in the year at least, the women demonstrate their independence, their responsibility, and importance for the fertility of the community and the land.(Burkert 1985: 245) Yet the ritual is finite, and Burkert also writes: ‘The Greeks finally interpreted Demeter thesmophoros as the bringer of order, the order of marriage, civilization, and of life itself, and in this they were not entirely mistaken5 (1985: 246).5 It is this return to order that Thesmophoriazusae advocates. Feminist performance criticism and literary theory highlight a facet of the play that sets the spirit of Dionysus, god of theater and transformation, against the spirit of Demeter, goddess of fertility and rebirth; at the end, Dionysus triumphs.6 Masculine power over representation on stage is reaffirmed, as is the innately comic representation of women by men.It has become a recent scholarly topos to remark upon the relative lack of serious critical attention paid to Thesmophoriazusae and upon the delegation of the play to the shadows of Aristophanic studies. The play has often been declared of lesser importance through a judgement about its lack of overt political references and its obsession with parody and other allegedly purely theatrical issues. Yet the play does contain some political satire, both broad (e.g. the parody of the ecclesia) and specific (e.g. the caricature of Kleisthenes).7 Additionally, the theatrical issues at its core are hardly frivolous; in fact, they are essential to the health of the polis, especially if misunderstood or misemployed.Rather than begin at the beginning, I shall start this discussion of Thesmophoriazusae at the center of the play. About two-thirds of the way through, the chorus performs what functions as a parabasis.8 They speak about male attitudes towards women and attempt to establish the general superiority of women to men. Many of their comments, appropriately enough, recall the themes of role-playing and gender identity. The first section of the parabasis (785-803) discusses the ‘bad thing5 (to Kaicov: 786, 787, 789, 791,794, 796, 797, 799) that a woman is to a man, and it points out the absurdity of male attempts to control women and to keep them invisible, especially when men really want to see women in the first place (788-91; 797-9).9 The argument then
attempts to establish feminine superiority by comparing women’s names to men’s names and women’s honorable behavior to men’s dishonorable behavior (804-18). The accoutrements of feminine and masculine identity are discussed: And we in domestic economy too Are thriftier, shiftier, wiser than you.For the loom which our mothers employed with such skill,With its Shafts and its Thongs, - we are working it still,And the ancient umbrella by no means is done,We are wielding it yet, as our Shield from the Sun.But O for the Shafts, and the Thong of the Shield,Which your Fathers in fight were accustomed to wield,Where are they to-day? Ye have cast them away As ye raced, in hot haste, and disgraced, from the fray!
