Page 19 - GALIET THESMOPHORIAS and Euphorias IV

Galiet & Galiet
uniting rather than dividing, capable of creating harmony rather than being the cause war, capable of rational rather than irrational thought.
Such Aristophanean wanderings and clever suggestions propose a socio-political upheaval where, the traditional, antiquated, passive roles of women need revising. Aristophanes, says Taaffe, considers women essential to the polis even under male dominance.9 If we consider the possibility that Aristophanes might have been married or have enjoyed affairs with dicteriads (prostitutes), auletrids (talented dancers and flute-players) or hetairas (intelligent, cultivated, artistic women of the world),10 we can conjecture that he would have been charmed and that his liaisons might have even been negotiated with the aim to persuade audiences as to women’s roles in exchange for sexual favours. This is not such a far-fetched proposition knowing the manipulative character that women develop in societies where they are treated as inferior and subservient citizens.
If we accept this assumption, we can suggest that Aristophanes uses comedy as his secret weapon to indirectly challenge previously unchallenged male-identity roles by writing plays that project women, not as the cause of all evil and war, but as rational, productive and constructive beings who refuse to be treated as mere “pawns”, mere “things” and mere “objects of vision and desire”: women as strong as men. Otherwise, why would Aristophanes create a virtuous character such as Lysistrata in 411? Why does Aristophanes invite females to seize and occupy male spaces of authority? I believe it is to show the positive aspects that female empowerment can have for the polis. Let’s remember that Aristophanes portrays Lysistrata as an insolent, tenacious and rebellious leader, a female whose masculine nature not only has the capacity to be “seen and heard” 3⁄4 eye and funnel, phallus and vagina 3⁄4 but also as one who reconstructs a falling, Athenian demos by achieving a peace treaty.
Certainly, Lysistrata’s assertiveness is contrasted to the weakness of Agathon who refuses to act, to the inability of Mnesilochus who cannot speak and behave
9 L. Taaffe. “Men as Women: Thesmophoriazusae”, Ch. 3 in Aristophanes and Women, London 1993: 13.
10 DeBouvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Trans. H. M. Parshley. New York: Vintage Books, Random House, 1989. See From Patriarchal Times. 90 - 91
• 19•