Page 18 - GALIET THESMOPHORIAS AND EUPHORIAS: Of Eyes and Funnels, Of Tracks and Traces IV

Galiet & Galiet
Foxhall in “Women’s Ritual and Men’s Work in Ancient Athens” questions whether it is self-evident that origins of the Thesmophoria are strictly agricultural. She argues that women are fully integrated into society since the state festival calendar includes women’s festivals. In her view, this highlights the dynamics of gender relationships in the social, political, religious and cosmological orders. Her insights are based on the works of French Structuralists Detienne, Zeitlin and Winkler.21
Foxhall posits that the Thesmophoria provide an opportunity for social gathering of women and reunion with natal families. In her view, it is pertinent that the myth of Demeter and Kore celebrates the cosmological ties between mother and daughter. She opposes Brumfield’s position who suggests that Kore’ abduction reflects the severing of the ties between mother and daughter. Fox, like Dillon, says it is only a partial severance because Kore and Demeter still reunite. Foxhall, therefore, suggests that the Thesmophoria parallels the partial reunion of Demeter and Kore because reunions of mothers and daughters were suppressed by “patriarchal and patrilineal constructions of kin” (107). Foxhall also notes the proximity of masculine festivals to the Thesmophoria. The Apatouria, celebrating the phratries, occurs two weeks after Thesmophoria followed by Skira and Dipoleia in honour of Zeus Polieus, the male deity of the city as if needing to reassert their masculinity. Foxhall concludes that women are active in the state “cosmologically, socially and politically” for two reasons. First, women’s festivals, such as the Thesmophoria, were part of the calendar of the polis. Second, grain was not only the most important food staple, but also it meant the gift of a civilized life: grain was the gift of the Two Goddesses. In
21 Detienne is inflexible, unable to accommodate differences.
Zeitlin’s is relatively inflexible, focus on fixed symbolic oppositions.
Winkler’s argument is more flexible; however, he views feminine rites as a “political reaction to oppressed feminity.”
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