Greek women

“ When one reflects on the varied activity of Greek women, the conclusion forces itself upon him that they were intellectually as acquisitive and as brilliant as the Greek men, who have set the standard for the world in the realm of literature and science. Cleverness is the most salient characteristic of the Greek intelligence, and this trait belonged as truly to the female sex as to the male. The Renaissance furnishes examples of women renowned for their erudition and culture ”

“ She bounds our ideas by a circle over which we cannot step. The sculptors of Greece represented nothing but what they saw; and even when the cunning of their hand was most felicitous, even when love and grace and all the poetry of womanhood appeared to breathe from their marbles, the inferiority of their imitation to the creations of God, in properties belonging to form, in mere contour, in the grouping and development of features, must have sufficed to impress even upon Phidias, that high priest of art, how childish it was to rise above nature. ”

“ Had his life not been blessed with union with hers, had his temperament not been sweetened by her companionship, had his policy not been moulded partly by her counsel and her wisdom, had his taste not been made so subtle and refined by communion with her artistic temperament, Athens would not have been embellished by the works of art which have made that city the unapproachable ruler in the domain of the spirit. Woman's influence, where it has counted most, has always been a silent one, and has worked through man. ”

“ For the proper understanding of the status of woman among the Greeks of ancient times, it becomes necessary for the historian of Greek womanhood to call attention to a conspicuous social phenomenon pervading the life of all the nations of antiquity, but nowhere else so marked a feature of the higher life as in the lands of Hellas--a phenomenon bringing about social conditions that divided the female population of Greece into two sharply distinguished classes: the citizen-woman and the courtesan or mistress. ”

“ Thus, owing to the Athenian conception of the city-state, the natural functions of woman--domesticity and companionship, which should be united in one person, were divided, the Athenian man looking to his wife merely for the care of the home and the bearing and rearing of children, and to the hetæra for comradeship and intellectual sympathy. This evil was the canker-worm which gnawed out the core of the social life of Athens and caused the unhappiness of the female sex. ”

“ From the age of Solon to that of Pericles, the overwhelming degree of superiority assumed by Athenian men over women had uprooted in the former every vestige of restraint, at the same time that it had deprived them of the last trace of that respect for womanhood which under earlier and more natural conditions had been entertained.
It has been frequently remarked that women took little or no part in the intellectual development of Greece; that during the most rapid progress of Greek men, there was no corresponding improvement in the position occupied by Greek women. ”

“ But not only is the history of Greek women written by men, but it was written for men. This fact must be specially remembered when we have to deal with the utterances of the comic poets, for women did not act in the plays, nor is it probable that they were even present at the comedies during the best days of Athens. But men taking the parts of women are sure to act them with all the exaggeration and licence which are natural to such representations. No great stress must, therefore, be laid on the wild abuse of women which can be culled in large abundance from Greek writers. ”

“ Though woman's influence is exercised silently and unobtrusively, it is none the less potent in determining the character and destiny of a people. Historians do not take note of it, men overlook and undervalue it, and yet it is ever present; and in a civilization like that of the Greeks, where the feminine element manifests itself in all its higher activities,--in its literature, its art, its religion,--it becomes an interesting problem to inquire into the character and status of woman among the Greek peoples. ”

“ Greek literature, however, is our chief source of knowledge in this regard, yet even the information afforded by that literature is inadequate and unsatisfactory in the glimpses it gives of the life of woman. All that we know about Greek women, with the exception of the fragments of Sappho's poems, is derived from chronicles written by men. ”

“ The free woman, or the hetæra, has entered upon the stage. Poets were inspired by love, but romantic love between husband and wife is being replaced by the love of the beautiful and highly educated "companion," or the natural place of the highborn woman is being invaded by the baser passion for "those fair and stately youths, with their virgin looks and maiden modesty "--two classes that were to play so large a rôle in society in the greatest days of Greece, and who were to bring about its downfall. ”

“ Like mother, like son--and the Spartan ideal of the son was the warrior strong, brave, and resolute, enduring hardship and living solely for the State. Hence the mother must be strong, brave, and resolute, sacrificing every womanly tenderness to the prevailing conception of patriotism.
Great is the contrast between the women of the various peoples of Greece. The Achæan woman, in Homeric times, played no prominent part in public affairs; her home was her palace, and she manifested those domestic traits and womanly qualities that in this day still constitute womanly charm. ”

“ These extraordinary women, all foreigners, and mostly Ionian, made the main phenomenon of Athenian society. They were the only women with whom an enlightened Greek could converse as equal to himself in education. While the law denied them civil rights, usage lavished upon them at once admiration and respect. By stealth, as it were, and in defiance of legislation, they introduced into the ambitious and restless circles of Athens many of the effects, pernicious or beneficial, which result from the influence of educated women upon the manners and pursuits of men. ”

“ Divergent views have been entertained by writers who have discussed the social position of woman at Athens and the estimation in which she was held by man. Many scholars have asserted that women were held in a durance not unlike that of the Oriental harem, that their life was a species of vassalage, and that they were treated with contempt by the other sex; while the few have contended that there existed a degree of emancipation differing but slightly from that of the female sex in modern times. ”

“ The women of the lower classes, no doubt, preserve many of the characteristics of the race in all ages, in spite of the intermingling with foreign peoples and the results of centuries of Turkish oppression, which time alone can eradicate. Domestic fidelity, maternal affection, devotion to religious observances, the cheerful discharge of the duties and responsibilities of wedded life, are nowhere more beautifully illustrated than among the Greek women of to-day. ”

“ The Athenian tragedians also locate their plots in the Heroic Age, but they endow their characters with a depth of thought, with a power of reflection, with an insight into the problems of life, which were altogether foreign to men and women in the childhood of the world, and were characteristic of Athens in its brilliant intellectual epoch. Hence a history of Greek womanhood must draw largely from the works of the poets, and must endeavor to give a picture of the women who figure in the Iliad and the Odyssey and in the dramas of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. ”

“ While Greek women cannot vote, they take an active part in political life. During campaigns they make speeches for their husbands and brothers, and at other times traverse the country expounding the doctrines of the party they espouse. They resemble the English political woman of the style of Mrs. Humphrey Ward's "Marcella," a type scarcely to be found in any other country.
Even into slumbering Turkey, land of harems, Greek women are carrying modern ideas of education. ”

“ And Greek sculpture presents ideal types of woman, perfect physically and highly endowed with every intellectual and sensuous charm. From these works of plastic art, abounding in the museums of Europe, we know that the Greek woman was beautiful, the peer of man in physical excellence. In form, the Greek woman was so perfect as to be still taken as the type of her sex. "Her beauty, from whatever cause, bordered closely upon the ideal, or rather was that which, because now only found in works of art, we call the ideal. But our conceptions of form never transcend what is found in nature. ”

“ Hers was a lofty and richly endowed nature, with a perfect sense of the beautiful, and hers a harmonious and felicitous development. For the first time, the treasures of Hellenic culture were found in the possession of a woman, surrounded by the grace of her womanhood, a phenomenon which all men looked upon with eyes of wonder. ”

“ The seclusion of Athenian girls and the careful rearing which they received at the hands of mothers and nurses were such as to fit them to rule the home. The Athenian maiden was noted throughout Hellas for her modesty and sweetness. The intelligence was not cultivated, but the heart and sensibilities had ample scope for development in the duties and recreations of the gynæconitis and in the participation in religious exercises. Such a simple and peaceful rearing tended to preserve the delicacy of the soul and to keep unstained innocence and purity. ”

“ Woman must have played a prominent role in the childhood of the Greek world, for much of the romantic interest which Greek legend inspires is derived from the mention of the women. Helen and Penelope, Clytemnestra and Andromache, and the other celebrated dames of heroic times, stand in the foreground of the picture, and are noted for their beauty, their virtues, their crimes, or their sufferings. Thus, a study of the history of woman in Ancient Greece properly begins with a contemplation of feminine life as it is presented in the poems of Homer. ”

“ Yet, when we estimate our sources of information, we find that there is no problem in the whole range of Greek life so difficult of solution as that concerning the status and character of Greek women. ”

“ This is the Transition Age of Greece. In aristocratic circles, among the families of the oligarchs and in the courts of tyrants, woman continued to hold a prominent place; but among the poorer classes, who were ground down by the aristocrats, life was hard and bitter, and woman was censured as the source of many of the ills of mankind. ”

“ But to return to our Greek ideal. Ancient Greek life was simple, natural; the Greek life of the future, as the outgrowth of the entire preceding history, will for this reason also prove infinitely more varied, more conscious, and nobler. Womankind also must, therefore, be thought of quite differently from what we see in the figures of Greek women, which are indeed noble and classically simple, but for this very reason also somewhat ‘monotonous and inflexible. Hitherto we have sought for ideals, in the representations of the plastic arts, especially among the ancient Greeks. ”

“ We do not desire to know merely the purely external features of feminine life among the Greeks, such as their dress, their ornaments, their home surroundings; we would, above all, investigate the subjective side of their life--how they regarded themselves, and were regarded by men ”

“ The Greek woman in Greece differs essentially from the Oriental woman. With the independence of Greece came a great patriotic movement for the building up of the new nationality, a movement in which women took a most active and prominent part. Several American women, especially Mrs. Hill, lent their aid and founded the first girls' school at Athens. "A whole generation of women," says a Greek lady, "distinguished for their social and family virtues, received their education in this [Pg 920] college." An association of Greeks soon afterward established a normal school for women. ”

“ As is usually the case, the truth lies in the golden mean between these two extremes; and a careful perusal of Greek authors, with the judgment directed to the spirit of their references to women rather than to a literal interpretation of disparate passages, will show that the status of the freeborn Athenian woman, while by no means ideal or conforming to our present standards, was far better than is usually conceded by the writers upon Greek life. ”

“ The oracles, the temples, the games, the processions in honor of their gods, tended to maintain the unity of Greece and were the promoters of national sentiment. Woman's part in these bonds of union made her influential in the welfare of the common country, and religious ceremonies were to her occasions in which she could feel herself an essential factor in Greek life.
In the childhood of the world, man, who reached conclusions by a long process of reasoning, stood in awe of the intuitive faculty in woman that enabled her to arrive at a truth without apparent effort. ”

“ There is ample evidence that the intellects of Greek women expanded fast enough when the conventional pressure was even partly removed. Nor is it true that they retrograded in morals as they advanced in intelligence. Never did the Attic poets point their shafts of satire so sharply as against the follies of the ignorant women who were limited mainly to their apartments, far from the possible corruption of knowledge or the visible temptation to sin. The tone of morality was purer even among the free Spartan women, who had more education but less surveillance. ”