It is difficult to comprehend the attitude of the dramatists of the
golden age toward women. They have left many fine and powerful types;
they have created heroines of singular moral grandeur and a superb
quality of courage that led them to face death or the bitterest fate as
serenely as if they were composing themselves to pleasant dreams; but
there was no insult or injustice too great to be heaped upon their sex.
There is not anything, nor will be ever,
Than woman worse, let what will fall on man,
says Sophocles. Æschylus, who is, on the whole, the most kindly
disposed, makes Eteocles call the Theban maidens a “brood intolerable,”
“loathed of the wise,” and emphasizes his opinion in these flattering
lines:
Ne’er be it mine, in ill estate or good,
To dwell together with the race of women.
Euripides strikes the bitterest note of all, and sums up his verdict
with crushing force:
Dire is the violence of ocean waves,
And dire the blast of rivers and hot fires,
And dire is want and dire are countless things,
But nothing is so dire and dread as woman.
No painting could express her dreadfulness,
No words describe it. If a god made woman
And fashioned her, he was for men the artist
Of woes unnumbered, and their deadly foe.
And this in spite of such characters as Alcestis and Iphigenia, who,
from a man’s point of view, certainly deserved an apotheosis! It is
said that Euripides was unfortunate in his wives, which may account,
in part, for his cynical temper. One might suspect that the author of
such a diatribe gave ample cause for disaffection, and that he had
no more than his deserts. But he seems to have avenged himself, as
smaller men have done, by railing at the whole sex. It is easy enough
to understand the portrayal of a Phædra or a Medea in dark colors, and
one can forgive the mad ravings of despair. But so many needless words
of general contempt signify more than a dramatic purpose. To-day they
would not be possible in a civilized country. The drama reflects the
dominant sentiments of the time, if not always those of the author,
and the frequency of such ungracious, not to say virulent, attacks
proves the complaisance of a Greek audience and the absence of all
consideration for women. Even Aristophanes takes Euripides to task for
being a woman-hater, and turns upon him the sharpest points of his
satire; but he has himself added the last touch of abuse, which only
misses its aim for modern ears by its incredible coarseness. He gives
to women all of the lowest vices, without a redeeming virtue. Their
presence at the comedy was quite out of the question.
One is tempted to multiply these quotations, as they put in so vivid
a light the injustice suffered by women when the expression of such
sentiments was habitual. The saddest feature of it is that men
abused them for the ignorance and frivolity which they had themselves
practically compelled. The dramatists lived and wrote in an age when
men had reached a higher plane of knowledge from which orthodox women
were rigidly excluded. The natural consequence of this exclusion was a
total lack of companionship, which sent the Attic woman into a species
of slavery, while her husband found his society in a class that was
better educated and more interesting, but less respectable. This
state of things was reflected in Athenian literature, especially in
the comedies, and it doubtless led to the general disdain of women so
freely expressed in the tragedies. To reconcile such an attitude with
the strong character of many of the women portrayed is not easy, unless
we take them as object-lessons to their sex in the honor and glory of
self-sacrifice.
In the glamour the poets have cast about their great creations, and
the marvelous power with which they have made these women live for us,
we are apt to lose sight of the fact that the moral force of the best
of them is centered in the superhuman immolation of themselves for the
benefit of men, to whom it never occurs that any consideration whatever
is due to these innocent sufferers. They are subject to men, and ready
to lay down their lives, if need be to make the world comfortable and
pleasant for them; yet they have only sorrow for themselves.
More than a thousand women is one man
Worthy to see the light of life,
says the young Iphigenia, as she folds her saffron veil about her, and
goes to her doom with words of love and forgiveness, praying for the
cruel masters she dies to save. The essence of her training, as of
her religion, lies in this meekly uttered sentiment, though the fated
child pleads for pity, since “the sorriest life is better than the
noblest death.” Strong men, among whom are her father and Achilles,
the heroes of the ancient world, stand calmly by and let her die. The
powerful lover, who will give his life later to avenge the death of
his friend, is sorry to lose so sweet a flower for his wife, but he
makes no real effort to save her. When she is told that the gods have
decreed her sacrifice for the good of her country, the cry of nature is
silenced, the touching appeal is stilled. She rises to a divine height
of courage, and is the consoler rather than the consoled.
Not less pathetic is the fate of Alcestis, though it is a voluntary
one. She robes herself for the tomb as tranquilly as if she were going
out on a message of mercy. With sad dignity she crowns with myrtle the
altar at which she prays, but not until she takes leave of the familiar
room so consecrated by love and happiness do the tears begin to fall.
This tender wife, who freely gives her life to save her husband, does
not falter as she passionately embraces her weeping children, and bids
a kind farewell to her pitying servants. The only thing she asks for
herself is to see the sun once more, and she tries to inspire this
selfish, posing, half-hearted husband with her own fortitude, as her
spirit “glides on light wing down the silent paths of sleep.” One
cannot help wondering if she never had a misgiving that the man who
could ask his wife to comfort him for his unspeakable misery in letting
her die for him was not worth dying for. But the Greek women had been
long trained in the school of passive suffering, and it never seemed
to occur to them that it was not quite in the nature of things for the
weaker half of the human family to have a monopoly of the sacrifices.
It was a part of their destiny; the gods so willed it. Men looked upon
it as a comfortable arrangement for themselves, that had good moral
results for women. To-day we are inclined to ask why a discipline that
is good for women, and tends toward their moral perfection, is not also
good for men, who have a like need of being perfected.
But, in spite of rational theories, the world’s heart still thrills
to a generous emotion so overpowering as to drown all consideration
of self, whether or not it is faulty in its mundane wisdom or its
arithmetic. And this it is which casts so lasting a glamour over the
women who loom out of the twilight of that far-off time, in noble
proportions that dwarf the selfish, arrogant men with whom they are
mated. They rise to the dignity of goddesses in their divine pity and
courage, while the great Achilles, the masculine ideal of the Greeks,
weeps like a child, and sends a generation of men to sleep on the
plains of Troy, because he cannot have what he wishes.
Yet it is in the minds of men that these women were conceived, and
it is impossible to suppose that they had not at least some faint
counterpart in real life, though possibly men, and women as well, are
apt to make ideals of what they think ought to be rather than of what
is. But why did the Greek poets cast such ridicule and dishonor upon
the sex which they have shown capable of such supreme devotion and such
exalted virtues?
There is a touch of justice in the bitter scorn with which the blind
Œdipus speaks of his sons who
Keep house at home like maidens in their prime,
while his daughters wear themselves to death for him and for his
sorrows.
No women they, but men in will to toil.
Perhaps Antigone is a trifle too coldly perfect, too faultlessly
wise--a tacit reflection upon every-day human nature, that likes its
ease, and counts the cost of its renunciations. We look for a trace
of weakness, a warm burst of living tenderness. But duty is shy like
love, and chary of expression. “I do not love a friend who loves in
words,” is the cry of her steadfast soul. There she stands, in the
still majesty of a sorrow that lies too deep for tears, supreme among
the classic types of the world as a model of filial devotion. Cordelia,
true and loyal as she is, and tender at heart, does not approach her
in strength and dignity. But the duty of the Greek heroine does not
end with her father’s death. She lays down her life at last that the
false-hearted brother, who has given her no gentle consideration in
her days of helplessness and despair, may not lie unburied on the
plains of Thebes, and so wander without rest in Hades. She laments
the lost pleasures of living. No husband or children are to be hers.
Yet no enthusiasm of passion or romance tempers this “cold statue’s
fine-wrought grace.” The man she was to marry is secondary. Love, in
our sense, does not enter as a motive power into her life, but her
human need of sympathy is shown in a few pathetic words:
And yet, of all my friends,
Not one bewails my fate;
No kindly tear is shed.
There are a few women of colossal wickedness who serve as foils,
or shadows in the picture. Their very sins are a part of the
overmastering strength that defies its hard limitations. “Of all
things, as many as have life and intellect, we women are the most
wretched race; we must first purchase a husband with excess of money,
then receive him as our lord,” is the bitter protest of the wronged
Medea, and the key-note to her tragical destiny. Clytemnestra says
that she has always been trained to obey, but she towers far above her
warrior husband in force as in crime. She resents his unfaithfulness;
she does not forgive him for the inhuman sacrifice of their innocent
daughter; she meets him on his own ground. It is appalling, the stern
and pitiless passion with which her untamed spirit, spurred on by the
white-hot hate which is often a great love reversed, tramples upon
every human impulse, and sweeps a whole race with her to destruction.
The clash of elemental forces is there, even though the responsibility
is shifted upon the gods, who use these frail mortals as blind
instruments in their inscrutable plans.
But these monsters of crime are few, and seem to throw into stronger
relief the self-forgetful women who exalt their inferior position,
and bend their heads to the yoke with such stately dignity that they
seem to command even in obeying. For, in spite of the important part
assigned them in the world of affairs as well as at the fireside,
they are constantly reminded of their little worth. “Let not women
counsel,” is the advice of men to the wisest of them.
Woman, know
That silence is a woman’s noblest part,
says the ill-tempered Ajax to his amiable wife. This gentle Tecmessa
wishes to die with him, for “Why should I wish to live if you are
dead?” He only tells her to mind her own affairs and be silent.
Telemachus orders his faithful mother not to meddle with men’s
business, but it was precisely because she did meddle with it, and
tried, by various simple arts, to bring order into the chaos men had
raised, that his royal father had any home to return to, or any kingdom
to leave to his ungracious son.