Visions of Women Influenced by Classical Literature

Visions of Women Influenced by Classical Literature

When discussing classical literature, there are clear favorites. There are obviously the great writers like Ovid, Sophocles, and of course, who could forget Homer, who is a staple of every high school reading list. Then there are the characters that everyone knows such as brave Achilles and cunning Odysseus. We all know and love these stories of the brave heroes of Greece, yet when looking for a female character to idolize, we are left with women who are known simply as wives and mothers. Of course, there is nothing wrong with these roles, but the women of mythology that are remembered most often are those who didn’t challenge the norms and were content simply being an offshoot of either the man they married or their father. Take, for example, perhaps the most known woman in the classical world, Helen of Troy. She is only known as the lovely Helen who was taken due to her beauty, her physical appearance being her only memorable trait to most. There’s also Penelope, who is married to Odysseus and waits twenty years for him to come home, maintaining her image as the ideal wife through all those years. 

Penelope loyally waits for Odysseus to return home.

As times have progressed, and specifically as more women enter the field of classics, these passages are being reexamined, and the ideas of past classicists have become questioned. In these old-fashioned views, women are rarely seen as anything more than a plot device to move the male hero’s story along. This holds true in many modern stories as well, as we as a society never truly moved away from this literary convention. In classical literature, women aren’t seen as a fully developed character that has agency over their own lives, yet as I began my studies towards a degree in classics, I found more and more examples of women who controlled their lives and fought against what was forced upon them. This led me to ask the question: in what ways are the views of women in classical literature corrupted by the male gaze and how does this affect our media now? Overall, how are female characters of classical literature being revisited and imbued with more agency? This is a topic of lively debate among classicists, some noting that these characters have been unfairly perceived as helpless, weak characters when in reality they have been historically overlooked. 

While looking into this topic, one trope in particular came up again and again: filicide, which is mothers murdering their sons. For such an extensive collection of examples, there surprisingly hasn’t been much conversation around these examples such as in the tales of Procne, Agave, and Ino. Rather than being viewed as women who committed heinous acts, they have been reduced to simply being driven insane. Patricia Salzman-Mitchell, a professor of classics at Montclair State University, goes in-depth on each of these women and their circumstances overall concluding that what was once assumed to be madness was simply an act of retribution on behalf of a scorned mother. These stories of filicide are never an act of simple aggression but are methodical, and even remorseful at times. For years, Procne was viewed as a crazed wife and mother who went to forbidden lengths for no reason, yet her act was one of justice for her sister, Philomela, who was being abused by Procne’s husband. In the moment of the crime, Procne hesitates, and Salzman-Mitchell notes “her maternal feelings vying with her sisterly love” yet in the end, she chooses her sister, and in doing so rejects her motherhood. Salzman-Mitchell notes that rejecting motherhood is a clear theme throughout these stories. In some way, all three of these women have a connection to Dionysos who was also known as Liber by the Romans, and Salzman-Mitchell makes the connection that in the story of Ino, he directly opposes Juno who is the symbol of conventional marriage and motherhood. 

Surely in no way is filicide to be celebrated, but in literary works, it is a symbol of a mother freeing herself and reclaiming her agency, yet these things become forgotten in annals of history. For centuries classicists refused to look further into these stories that brought to light the feminine aspect of mythology, yet again and again we can see examples of women reclaiming their freedom and being written off as an enemy. 

As more stories are reexamined by women, these vilified characters are gaining a new life. Lindsay Coo, a lecturer at the University of Bristol, dug into the sisterhood aspect of classical literature and analyzed both the relationship between Chrysothemis and Elektra, and Ismene and Antigone. In these relationships, the sisters are pitted against each other, with Elektra and Antigone being viewed as the interesting and lively characters, whereas Chrysothemis and Ismene are made to be a “colorless foil to her more vibrant sister.” as Coo states. Both of these stories are told by Sophocles, who often uses the trope of a solitary male hero who suffers and refuses to rethink their ideals. In these situations, these traits have been added to Elektra and Antigone to promote the idea that they are the heroes of the story, being that they have the more masculine traits. Coo notes that Chrysothemis and Ismene are the ‘weaker’ siblings, who don’t fight loudly but hide under the radar while continuing to try and rekindle their sisterhood. In the case of Elektra and Chrysothemis, the latter tries many times to reach out to Elektra to band together against their troubles, yet Elektra only bothers to acknowledge Chrysothemis when trying to convince her to rebel dangerously. 

Pitting these women against each other creates an unstable idea of feminine solidarity, and it tells the reader that a woman like Chrysothemis or Ismene isn’t worth our time simply because she has different values. In their situations, these ‘weaker’ characters follow the wiser social and political path, but since it isn’t loud and abrupt it is not seen as a viable option. These masculine focused ideas have permeated literature for as long as literature has existed, and even in the modern age these ideals have been preserved. So far, the literary women mentioned have mainly fallen forgotten to the modern age, yet there is one woman, or rather archetype, that unfortunately lives on in plenty of modern media: Phaedra. 

Phaedra is a character that when denied by the man she desires, takes her revenge by claiming that he sexually assaulted her. Edith Hall, a professor of classics at Durham University, writes on the consequences of this character being sensationalized. She addresses the history of women attempting to fight against their abuser in sexual assault cases, yet for many years women were seldom believed, and even needed to be examined by psychiatrists to see if they were reliable enough to tell their own testimonies. Hall notes that this unstable and vindictive type of woman has been present throughout the centuries, and has even been immortalized in many films, such as Desire under the Elms, The Graduate, and Phaedra’s Love, and many more just in this past century. Not many women from classical literature get this type of treatment, and Phaedra’s place atop this pedestal shows that the public will pick and choose what fits with their notions of life, and specifically their ideas of how women act. 

Mrs. Robinson from “The Graduate (1967)”, who fits the Phaedra archetype.

To take all of the stories of women from classical literature and filter them out by who fits the standards the best is to deny feminine diversity. This often leads to a woman being controlled by a singular trait, much like Penelope as was mentioned earlier. A blog post written by Rhianna Padman goes deeper into the complexity of Penelope rather than keeping her as a flat and static image of a woman. Padman insists on the cunning abilities of Penelope as well as the clear loyalty to Odysseus. Penelope spent two decades creating schemes to keep the suitors that courted her at bay, simply because she believed in her husband’s homecoming, yet this is chalked up to simply being her fidelity to her husband. Of course, Penelope was devoted to her husband, but at a certain point without her cunning, she would have been forced by the societal pressures to remarry one of the many suitors that courted her daily. 

With the diversification that has been happening in the field of classics for the past decade or two, new perspectives are being shown, and while this is redefining the roles of classical women, it is also bringing to light how restrained their characters were viewed as. These ideals being so present in everything from the literature of the past to the movies that we watch today, makes it impossible to dismiss the constraints that have been systematically placed upon women.