ABSTRACT
Gerolemou argues in this chapter that in tragedy the portrayal of women as mad serves an ideology of ‘female inferiority’, showing how Athenian democracy was based on a doctrine of exclusion. Nevertheless, by investigating female malady in several plays and primarily in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Gerolemou concludes that maddened female protagonists, though stylized and dispelled as mavericks, are at the same time perceived as alternatives to the traditional patriarchal, Athenian way of thinking. That is, whereas, madness on the one hand, systematically functions as a negative connotation contra female acts that are directed against traditional gender norms, on the other hand, it opens up a political space unexpectedly associated with conventional feminine roles.
