Theme: Role Of Women Flashcards
Why is book 6s Andromaches plea to Hector important for our understanding of why women mater in the Iliad ?
Andromache is behind the walls not fighting but she gives Hector some battle advice
- she advices him to fight by the fig tree as it’s open for the Greeks to attack and then scale the walls
- Hector responds telling her to return to her ‘home’ where her role is to look after the domestic and weaving
Homer clearly shows the delineated roles of Men and Women within the Iliad
- the women to work in the oikos and the man to fight
How do women drive the narrative?
The entirety of the Trojan war is waged over Helen
- contest for her
- the entire of the narrative itself depends on her for its beginning
- she is a driving force for the myth of Troy
moreover
- the quarrel at the start of the Iliad and it’s disastrous consequences including Patroclus’ death occur over a quarrel for two women: Chryseis and Briseis
- The pair therefore drive the start of the poem itself
- So not only do the women start the myth but they start the poetry
How do the women’s world create a different perspective ?
- When Hector goes back into Troy in book 6 he enters into the women’s sphere of influence, their world
- Hector meets with Hecabe his mother, Helen his sister in law and his wife Andromache
- In this we get a glimpse of the peace time which is slightly removed for the world of the men
- The Trojan women carry out religious ritual offering a robe to Athene and a promise to sacrifice a dozen heafers
How do we get an image of the woman’s world in book 22?
- Hector and Achilles run past the old washing places
- here it’s a clear juxtaposition of the roles of men and women
- men fight as Achilles and Hector are about to do where as we are reminded that women ‘wash their shining clothes’
- contrast between the two worlds of wartime and peace time in the roles of men and women
What is the biggest example of a woman being seen as a possession?
The duel for Helen in book 3
- Paris states that they should fight for ‘Helen and all the property I brought with her’
- Both described materialistically insinuating that the two are equivalent in value
- the Greeks she would simply be seen as an object for exchange in war. In Greek a geras
Where and what is the grim fate for women in war ?
Book 6
- Andromache makes a poignant and moving plea to Hector
- Andromache looks ahead to what her fate will be once Hector dies as he is her ‘father and mother and brother..[and] Husband’
- she is the sole person he depends upon
- however, Hectors response is all the important as it shows an awareness of this from both male and female
- ‘much more the thought of you’ is what saddens him about his death- more moved by Andromache taken as a slave than his own death
- demonstrates how contingent women are on men
How do see the exchange of women ?
Book 9
- Odysseus lists the women that Agamemnon will give to Achilles
- not only will he return Briseis but also 7 women of Lesbos
How are women allowed to speak in their major public role ?
Lamentation
- Briseis laments for Patroclus in the only time she speaks within the Iliad
- ‘tore with her hands at her breast and tender neck’
- it’s around loss of what has been rather than taking agency over her own speech
- strong contrast to men’s speeches who are commended for it such as in book 3 when Helen commends Odysseus’s ability to make incredibly speeches
How is Helen depicted in the first time we see her ?
Book 3
- weaving: an archetypal woman but she is also breaking out by weaving the ‘trials that the Trojans and Greeks suffered for her sake’
- it’s a scene of the war, important as it’s of course the subject of the poem
- therefore, as Dr E. Hauser argues Helen is connected to Homer through he depiction of war
