Gender and the City in Euripides Political Plays

Daniel Mendelsohn. This book is a study of Euripides' so-called ‘political plays’ (Children of Herakles and Suppliant Women). DOI/acprof:oso/
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Apuleius' Metamorphoses Stefan Tilg. On Literary Worlds Eric Hayot. Muslims beyond the Arab World Fallou Ngom. The Anatomy of Myth Michael Herren. Rabinowitz is made to stand for the "classic feminist reading of tragedy" if there is such a thing in which the victimized tragic female is seen as reinforcing patriarchal ideology.

Foley, although accompanying footnotes mention only one of her articles. Saxonhouse's interpretation of the tragic female as a symbol of undesirable political and social diversity. This chapter more than any other suggests the book's origins as a dissertation formulated in the early s. There is almost nothing in the bibliography later than ; indeed, an early footnote explains that the study was "essentially complete" prior to p.

Fortunately, this theoretical positioning does not detract from the author's final point, and his ultimate contribution to the study of Euripidean drama, that gender is central to the political agendas of Children of Heracles and Suppliant Women , as well as to their dramatic structure.

Chapter 2, " Children of Heracles: Territories of the Other," explores the play as a suppliant drama of dislocation. The wandering Heraclids under the guidance of the aged Iolaus flee Argos and the tyranny of Eurystheus to seek asylum at Marathon. Deprived of heroic identity by old age and of civic identity by exile, Iolaus in his flight creates a political crisis resolved only by the sacrifice of an unnamed parthenos. This death heroizes the girl while at the same time feminizing the male by now a familiar trope in Euripidean studies, as exemplified by Medea and Jason, Alcestis and Admetus.

And yet her speech and her selfless gesture serve to "soften and redefine key terms of masculine heroism" The maiden's unseemly intrusion into the world of men becomes a model of "correct and appropriate civic 'boldness' " Since her sacrifice on behalf of her family ultimately contributes to the political stability of Athens, she may rightly be compared to the ephebe as she "stands beside" her death like a hoplite in formation paristasthai sphagei , v. But the gender reversal is only temporary: Taking the hoplite's armor from the feminine interior of the temple, he reclaims his status as warrior.

And yet this is not simply a recuperation of aristocratic heroism; rather, the girl's sacrifice effects a moral change in the old man.

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Whereas in the play's opening Iolaus voices a pre-democratic world view, rejecting the claims of the polis in favor of the genos , the death of the maiden instructs him in the ultimate democratic lesson, the importance of the ephebe's sacrifice for the city. The final, feminine intrusion of the wrathful Alcmene realizes and inverts the positive thrasos of the maiden; instead of teaching citizenship, she provides a lesson in how the unbridled female may endanger the well-regulated polis.

Mendelsohn concludes, contra Rabinowitz, that the virgin sacrifice depicted in the Children of Heracles does not support patriarchal aims but rather validates the place of the feminine within the polis. The representation of conflicts between opposing feminine types, the pure virgin and the vengeful mother, combined with the reduplicative blurring of boundaries between masculine and feminine, dramatize the need for a balanced political and civic identity.

In the end, the goddess Hebe -- youthful, virginal, but significantly not a mother -- appears as a mediating force, an Argive who winds up as a protector of Athens. The third chapter, " Suppliant Women: Regulations of the Feminine," elucidates subtle unities within the play through analysis of another pair of contrasting feminine figures, the mourning mother and the suicidal wife.

The play's Demetrian context suggests the symbolic significance of marriage and motherhood for the play. At Eleusis, the suppliant band of Argive mothers seeking to recover the bodies of their slain sons confront Aethra, the mother of Theseus, while Evadne through suicide seeks to join her dead husband in the realm of Persephone.

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