Female tragic protagonist & Greek Culture

FEMALE TRAGIC

PROTAGONISTS AND GREEK CULTURE

There is in fact , no literature , no art of any country , in which women are more prominent , more important , more carefully studied and with more interest , than in the tragedy , sculpture and painting of fifth-century Athens (qtd in Foley 6 ) INTRODUCTION

A brief background study of the Greek culture as regards womanhood is indeed imperative for this essay . The point of focus shall be the role of women in Greek culture and their status in the socio-political ambiance of the Athenian civilization p

Greek women played a significant role in Athenian culture as reproducers of children , as participants in public and private religious festivals and as caretakers within the households (Foley 4 . However , they had little or no say about how their lives were run . The Pater familias of each family was the decision maker for the women in the household . As a result , Greek women were not allowed to exercise legal autonomy hence they normally did not make significant social and economic choices without the supervision of a guardian or kurios (Foley 8

While their male counterparts either went to war or attended to state matters , the women tended to the `home front . They could not attend assemblies , serve on juries , or even speak in court . Not all these unending strife and discrimination of Athenian women gave them the benefit of a formal education . According to Foley

Attendance at the theater , at the Homeric recitations at the panathenaic festivals , and at other festivals that included myth-based songs and dance would have given women , if they attended them , an oral education (qtd . In Foley 9

Several theories have evolved on the actual origin and development of tragedy . However , in all these theories , it is quite clear that Greek tragedy developed out of the choral performances in celebration of Dionysus , the Greek god of wine and mystic ecstasy

Tragedy flourished in ancient Greece as a key to the religious , cultural and general entertainment of the 5th century Athenians (Atkins 102 There was a certain degree of perfection accorded to tragedy . Everything was larger than life . In addition , in such a male-dominated society as ancient Greece , tragedy was written and dramatized by men

The advent of female characters and protagonists on the Athenian stage must have caused a little stir , owing to the fact that this was a society that its own women to have as limited a public appearance and reputation as possible

EURIPIDES AND THE FEMALE GENDER

It has been said that out of the three great Athenian tragedians Euripides alone understood the plight and challenges of the Athenian women . According to Atkins in his study of this great writer

Euripides opens a new world to art and gives us a nearer view of passionate emotion , both in its purest forms and in the wildest aberrations by which men are controlled , troubled or destroyed (124

Arguably , Euripides was a sort of rebel . His thematic pre-occupation was not always towards the elevation of the revered...