As some have by now surely pointed out, Lysistrata might appear to the modern audience to have a somewhat
feminist/pro-matriarchal agenda, as admittedly was also my initial impression. However,
it surely cannot be so, and I would argue that the purpose of the play was surely
more satire than feminist-agenda. There are two details in the play that, when
they are compared with what I would consider the typical feminist agenda, reveal
inconsistencies in the plot that don't allow for the presence of such an agenda. Let me clarify: these particular inconsistencies
are not criticisms of the plot
itself; on the contrary, I thought it was amusing. However, if one is looking
at the play through the lens of the feminist agenda, the faults become
increasingly evident as the play proceeds.
In the
ancient world, nearly all societies were considered patriarchal, which means that things were both run and done in a
very masculine regard. Wars were a source of revenue, men were the only ones
given the privilege of serving in the military, and in almost all cases, were
the exclusive subjects of artwork, literature, and history. (There were a few
exceptions, granted, such as in the case of Hypatia, the mistress of Pericles,
but they were so few in number in comparison that little is left to doubt as to
the presence of strong record-favorability.) The Greeks regarded the female forms
as “defective males,” possibly even going so far as to suggest the birth of a
woman the result of improper heating of the growing child in the womb of the
mother. (Coincidentally, they could have attributed womankind’s seemingly
eternal state of “It’s freezing in here” to this idea.) They even had a term
for the perfection and idealization of the male existence, called Arȇte. It should be noted, however, that in
Greek society, women had more rights than they had ever had before in almost
the entirety of human history, but it still wasn't anywhere close to the level of modern-day gender-equality that we experience. The point to be made is this: even at this time in history, Greek
playwrights certainly weren’t going to write for women. At the same time, they probably wouldn't seriously suggest, and to a largely male audience at that, that women could run the government better than the men; that
suggestion wouldn’t fall in line with the opinions of the age, and certainly wouldn't have garnered much of an audience.
If that didn't convince you, let's take a look at the whole point of the feminine agenda. Most would argue that in a work
designed to promote the favorability of women over men in the making of ancient-world political decisions, it
would be unwise to give the audience any reason to believe that the smart, strong-willed
women protagonists had any kind of defining trait, or motivation, that they shared with their
baboon-like, sexually-driven male counterparts. However, in the play, the reasoning behind the beginning
of the coup-de-etat spawned from what
seemed to be a very masculine issue: sexual starvation. Now, don’t get me
wrong, both men and women obviously have basic, biological desires for certain
kinds of… relief… but the idea of sexual starvation is one that most people
commonly associate with men, simply because
men have a higher sex-drive, on average, than women do. (Don’t believe me?
Comedians joke about this subject all the time, there are segments of the Bible
that discuss the issue of wives denying their husbands, and so on and so
forth.) In my opinion, to give the women this very masculine motivation for
their scheme in the first place would seem to undermine their femininity, and
by extension, also the potential for a feminist agenda.
My opinion as to the purpose of this play is
possibly a little more sarcastic than it would appear in the modern world. I
think the play served as a method by which the author wanted to show that
things in the Greek government were getting so bad regarding war that a bunch
of women could do things better. It
would be like saying “A bunch of five-year-olds could run this university
better…” In this case, the women merely serve as the placeholder for anything “less
than” a Greek man and his Athenian government. The sexual motives in the play?
Merely a vessel (and one that certainly everyone in the audience can easily understand)
by which the point can be delivered to the audience: we want these stupid wars
to end.(Disclaimer: I happen to love women, and approach feminism the same way I approach masculism: they're both ridiculous and backward. Men and women were intended to exist in harmony. My pastor said once that "Women are better than men... at being women. And men are better than women... at being men." )
