Lefkowitz, 'Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer's Odyssey', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9511
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9511-lefkowitz-distaff
@@@@95.11.7, Cohen, ed., The Distaff Side
Beth Cohen (ed.), The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in
Homer's Odyssey. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Pp.
288. $39.95. ISBN 0-508682-1.
Reviewed by Mary R. Lefkowitz -- Wellesley College
mlefkowitz@wellesley.edu
One of the notable achievements of classical scholarship in
the last two decades of this century has been the recovery of the
history of women in the Greek and Roman world. It has been, of
course, a complicated task. There were considerable data, but
most had not been collected, and some had hardly been
investigated. Everything had to be read and reread again, with
new attention to what the old history books often omitted to
mention. Not surprisingly, the Odyssey has proved to be
one of the most important sources for understanding the
centrality of women's role in archaic Greece. Had there been no
Penelope, Odysseus would not have returned to Ithaca, and female
figures are involved in every stage of his story.
The essays collected in The Distaff Side provide a
useful addition to the sizeable new literature on females in the
Odyssey. The essays have been thoughtfully edited, and can
be read with profit by undergraduates as well as by their
instructors. All Greek is transliterated, obscurities are
explained, and technical and theoretical terminology avoided.
There are five interesting articles on the literary treatment of
females in the Odyssey. These explore the ways in which
the goddesses and women of the epic affect the lives of the gods
and men, and how they relate in significant ways to one another.
But an unusual, and thus especially valuable feature of the book
is its comprehensive treatment of the representations of the
Odyssey in ancient art. As well as being interesting in
themselves, depictions of the Odyssey provide perhaps the
most accurate means at our disposal of seeing how Greeks (or at
least Greek men) in later centuries understood the roles that
females play in the epic. Literature is less helpful for the
purpose because so little of it has come down to us. For example,
of the many plays about the returns of heroes from the Trojan
war, only one drama about events in the Odyssey survives,
and that play (Euripides' Cyclops) tells us little about
females. Surviving testimonia about the lost plays are not
informative. Was Sophocles' Plyntriae or Nausicaa a
satyr play, or a drama with a positive outcome, like the
Philoctetes? Sophocles' Niptra described how
Eurycleia washes Odysseus' feet and how he was wounded (but was
it by the boar, or by one of the suitors, or by the spine of the
roach-fish that caused his death?) And how were Nausicaa and
Eurycleia portrayed?
The introductory section of The Distaff Side consists
of three essays. The first is a concise and informative
discussion by A. J. Graham of the date of the Odyssey, and
of its potential use as a historical document. Graham argues that
from all points of view the most probable date for the
composition of the epic falls during the period 750-700 B.C.;
such dating would be consistent with the description of trade and
exploration given in the stories (both false and true) of the
characters' lives. If the stories give an accurate impression of
the world at the time the epic was composed, slave women as well
as men were traded, and Greek women were included in the
settlement of new Greek colonies. Graham suggests that Penelope,
Nausicaa, and Arete are "the women the Greeks of the eighth
century thought of as appropriate wives and partners in a Greek
community." In the Odyssey even Helen conforms to this
idealized pattern. As Graham showed in an important article, the
Greeks' religion required the presence of women, as priestesses
of both public and domestic cults.[[1]]
The second introductory essay, by Seth L. Schein, discusses
problems of interpretation. He explains why Penelope can be
regarded as a second hero of the epic and observes that in the
Odyssey, it is a harmonious marriage, not just success in
war, that brings its hero kleos. Schein also discusses the
negative role played by other females in the epic. In his view,
Odysseus in his narrative of his adventures defines what is human
as male and associates both pleasure and danger with female.
Schein's definition works for Calypso, Circe, Scylla and
Charybdis, and the Sirens. But what about Odysseus' poignant
description in book 11 of his mother Anticleia, and the many
women, "the wives and daughters of heroes" who come up to him
after her? Schein argues that the Cyclops episode fits this
pattern of danger because the hero is enclosed in and reborn from
a womb-like cave. Perhaps; but that is surely not what Homer (or
Odysseus) seeks to emphasize. What is frightening about the
Cyclopes, and the Laestrygonians, is thatthey are (to put it
mildly) uncivilized. Although gender roles matter in the epic,
other issues, like justice and hospitality matter even more.
The third chapter, by Diana Buitron-Oliver and Beth Cohen,
surveys the portrayal of the Odyssey's female characters
in art. (There are black-and-white plates illustrating the
objects discussed in the center of the volume). Of the divine
females, depictions survive of the Sirens, Scylla, and of Circe.
Although Odysseus does not describe the Sirens, in art they are
depicted as bird-women; Odysseus' encounter with them is depicted
on a beautiful red-figured stamnos (British Museum E 440) with
what the authors call a "typically fifth-century twist--the male
hero does not merely outwit these seductive bird-monsters, but
vanquishes them:" one is plummeting to the ground because she has
failed to seduce him with her song. There is a gruesome
description of monster Scylla in the Odyssey, but in art
she is treated more sympathetically. Circe's seductive powers are
brought out particularly well on an attic calyx-krater (MMA
41.83). The human characters portrayed by the artists include a
range of portraits, both serious and comic, of (as we might have
expected) Nausicaa and of Penelope. Among these is the portrait
of Penelope with her loom and Telemachus on the Penelope
painter's red-figured skyphos (Chiusi 1831) that while it does
not correspond to any scene in the Odyssey, beautifully
expresses Penelope's state of mind. More surprising to discover
as an important subject of art are the wives and mothers of book
11 whose presence has caused modern critics so much difficulty.
According to Pausanias (10.29.3-7), they were the subject (along
with some women Homer does not mention) of a famous painting by
Polygnotus. Buitron-Oliver and Cohen suggest that these women
were included in the Odyssey because of "their important
generative role in the perpetuation of the noble lines that
constituted the civilized Greek world." Also important to the
ancient imagination were the female slaves who were executed by
Odysseus for sleeping with the suitors.
The next section of the book consists of four essays on female
representations in the text of the Odyssey itself. Sheila
Murnaghan considers the complex and critical role played in the
epic by Athena. The goddess' own abstinence from sexuality
enables her to control the chaotic forces around her, yet at the
same time she is completely capable of working through human
sexuality--even in her teasing of Odysseus in book 13. Murnaghan
suggests that Athena's virginity gives her a kind of power that
mothers lack, even when they are goddesses; she compares her
effectiveness to Thetis' failure in the Iliad to save her
son Achilles. The comparison is indeed illustrative; but the
ancient audience would have understood that there is another (and
ultimately much more important) reason for Athena's success than
her maiden status: she is the daughter of Zeus. Her triumph at
the end of the Odyssey does not depend on her androgynous
sexuality, but rather on her father's authority. When at the end
of book 24 Odysseus ignores her command, Zeus himself hurls a
thunderbolt at his feet.
Lillian Eileen Doherty discusses narrations by females. Like
Schein, she associates females in the Odyssey with danger;
in her view, one of their more potent threats is of usurping "the
hero's privileges as narrator and focalizer of his own story."
She presumes that Helen's story of the Trojan horse is somehow
contradicted by Menelaus' longer narrative, and that the Sirens'
song must be ignored by Odysseus specifically because it is
similarly unauthorized. This suggestion, although intriguing, is
somewhat misleading. No one in the Odyssey thinks Helen's
story is false; women in the Odyssey, although they are
all subsidiary characters, say much that is important and central
to the narrative; they are not always threatening. As in the
Iliad, one of their important roles is to comment on the
effect of the war and violence brought by the males into their
world; that is the topic of Penelope's first speech in the
Odyssey (1. 337-44).[[2]]
The importance of Penelope as such a moral agent is discussed
by Helene P. Foley in an interesting and persuasive essay. Foley
explains how Penelope is not being disloyal when she arranges
(against her own inclinations) the contest with the bow; rather,
he is carrying out Odysseus' instructions. She shows that in
Aristotle's terms Penelope's action is not dubious or irrational,
but tragic, and an ultimate indication of her fidelity. Although
other women forget their previous marriage and children, she will
remember her home, "even in her dreams" (19.581). Even though she
necessarily lacks a man's independence, Penelope wins
kleos because of her ability to act unselfishly for the
good of her family: "choices made from a relatively marginal,
relatively powerless position can also serve to set a new moral
direction for the dominant male agents of Homeric poetry."
The symbol of Penelope's fidelity is Odysseus' bed, and Froma
Zeitlin discusses the complex ways in which this symbol can be
thought to work throughout the narrative: Telemachus' suggestion
that his father's bed may now be covered with spider webs (16.
35-36) is prefigured by the bed on which Ares and Aphrodite are
trapped by invisible bonds. She finds it significant that no
ancient artist ever sought "to translate its presence into visual
reality," because of it is not a thing but a sign, a mental
construct with an ambiguous significance. But perhaps this
characterization of the bed places too much emphasis on the
possibility of a wholly imaginary infidelity. It is not the poet
(or Odysseus) but the shade of Agamemnon who says that
Clytemnestra will give "an evil reputation to all women, even on
one who does good" (24.201-202). While (as Zeitlin says) the
possibility that Penelope might yet prove unfaithful builds
suspense throughout the narrative, I think she is somewhat
overstating the case when she says that "the poem
self-consciously depicts the formation and authorization of a
tradition of misogyny even as it places the counter-example at
the center of the story." Why in this case is misogyny (rather
than distrust) the mot juste?
The discussion of art is resumed in four essays on particular
topics. H.A. Shapiro concentrates on the meeting of Odysseus and
Nausicaa. He notes the interpretive details that have been added
by the artists, including the names of Nausicaa's companions; he
comments on the significance for mortal females of encounters
with strange males by the sea shore. Richard Brilliant discusses
the Circe episode, and describes how she was connected in art
with the Sirens, and the greed of Odysseus' companions was linked
to the greed of the suitors. Also he observes that in art, it is
the balance of power between Circe and Odysseus and not their
erotic relationship that seems to be emphasized.
Jenifer Neils considers Scylla and the Sirens; strangely the
half-erotic Scylla "continues to flourish in Roman art." The sea
is friendlier to Odysseus in Italian art: he rides away from
Charybdis on the back of a turtle. The ancients understood the
erotic lure of the Sirens, even though Odysseus does not mention
it: the other side of the red-figured vase with the falling Siren
depicts Erotes cruising for young boys. The potential allure of
the female figures is expressed by various degrees of undress;
only Penelope is always fully clothed.
In the concluding essay, Christine Mitchell Havelock surveys
artistic versions of the episode in which Eurycleia washes
Odysseus' feet, and examines how each artist uses or ignores the
literary text. In Greek art Eurycleia is dignified; but in Roman
art she becomes stooped and old. Havelock ends with a reflection
that provides an instructive epilogue to the book. The
footwashing scene was not so popular in art as Odysseus' blinding
of the Cyclops; they preferred acts of victorious violence to
scenes that revealed a hero's humanity.
NOTES
[[1]] A. J. Graham, "Religion, Women, and Greek
Colonization,"Religione e citta nel mondo antico, Atti centro
richerche e documentazione sull' antichita classica 11
(1980-81): 293-314.
[[2]] Cf. M.R.Lefkowitz, "The Heroic Women of Greek Epic," The
American Scholar 56 (1987): 508-13.