Gender Roles In Lysistrata By Aristophanes

Aristophanes writes poorly of women in many instances throughout the comedy. Lysistrata makes fun of femininity. She says “if my invitation was for one of those orgies, held for Little Dick or High Dick or Low Clit, you wouldn’t be able to get through all the bum- and drum-beaters clogging the streets” Lysistrata also says “I’m fuming, Caloniki! I’m boiling inside. Damned women!

Many argue that the statuses of the victors in a revolution are always elevated, but in the case of Lysistrata, the status of women remains stable. Lysistrata is a comedy written by Aristophanes. Lysistrata, the main character leads the protest against the Peloponnesian war (around 431-404 BC) by assembling a group of women willing to refuse sexual contact with their partners. The play suggests that Lysistrata wants the war to end so that the husbands could safely return home to stay with their wives. Throughout the course of the play, the idea of listening to propositions made by women is rather absurd, and ignoring them completely was far too common. It was not until the end of the play that Lysistrata’s proposition is finally taken into

Throughout history, art has been a reflection of society, an indication to culture and a way to analyze historical context. Art is a gateway to understanding how people think, feel, and act in the context the art was created in. Athenian theater remains popular in modern times; it is not only timeless in its message but it can be useful in analyzing the way in which people lived during the time. Oedipus and Lysistrata, both Greek dramas, prove an example of this: they provide a reflection on the views of women at the time. The playwrights, Sophocles and Aristophanes, were both highly popularized at the time, deeply culturally ingrained into society and therefore highly reliable when it comes to cultural observation. The role of women in Ancient Athens was that of subservience and limitation. Respectable women held no job, instead bound housework and childcare. While higher class women often had

Euripides was one of the most well-known playwrights of ancient Greece. He was known as a modern playwright because he wrote with realism, and had a doubtful way of portraying the gods in his plays. Euripides’s plays had women as the main character because he had a sympathetic way of portraying women. The women were mainly strong and are passionate in their motives for their actions. Although Euripides is well known now, during ancient Greece Euripides wasn’t an appreciated playwright. When there were play performances men would be the audience since women weren’t allowed to take part in or watch the plays. So with the focus of women in his plays, he gave them a voice, which would throw men off, mainly because they would be terrified if their wives did and said the same things. Euripides supplied a philosophical thought to the women he has written about.

Ultimately, she chooses to use manipulation and temptation to her advantage to sway the minds of men. “If we sat there at home in our make-up, and came into their rooms wearing our lawn shifts and nothing else and plucked down below delta-style, and our husbands got all horny…but we kept away and didn’t come to them—they’d make peace fast enough I know for sure” (Aristophanes 80) Lysistrata urges that the women avoid sex by any means, even if they must fight against physical force by their husbands (Aristophanes). By using this tactic of a sex strike applied all over mainland Greece, Lysistrata remains confident that women can persuade men to keep peace as opposed to war. Therefore, evidence suggests in Aristophanes’ play that women such as Lysistrata derives power and authority over men through sex and temptation. Women can only attempt to persuade them due to the fact that men hold too much power to be outright forced to anything.

In the ancient world, views of women were often derogatory, yet some viewed women as intelligent and powerful. The Epic of Gilgamesh and Lysistrata both display the complex opinions towards women of the time. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, the characters Shamhat and Ishtar provide the audience with a biased view towards women, but this work also provides a more positive opinion of women through Siduri, Utnapishtim's wife, and Aruru. As paralleled in Aristophanes’s Lysistrata, Calonice and Peace represent negative perspectives of women, but this play also portrays women positively with Lysistrata and Myrrhine. The ancient texts of The Epic of Gilgamesh and Lysistrata simultaneously depict women as inferior, equal to, and superior to men to represent the complex views of women that were present during ancient times.

Women have normally been portrayed as people who aren’t as capable as men. It wasn’t until the last few decades that the feminist movement has poked a hole in gender roles. Thinking of this, it’s assumed that in fifth century Greece women were used to home life, would usually follow these gender roles, and didn’t have much of an authoritative voice in their home or society. Sophocles portrayed Antigone as depending on men in his tragedy Oedipus at Colonus, while Aeschylus broke the gender barrier and had Clytemnestra be a face of Agamemnon’s feminism. This difference in these women’s voices could possibly show how the Sophocles and Aeschylus felt about women in power at the time and/or merely just be to add to the plot. How women are portrayed in Agamemnon and Oedipus at Colonus shows the use of strong, or lacking, female authority and voice in the 5th century.

The different portrayals of female characters Antigone and Lysistrata illustrate the fundamental nature of the proper Athenian woman. Sophocles' Antigone allows the reader to see that outrage over social injustices does not give women the excuse to rebel against authority, while Aristophanes' Lysistrata reveals that challenging authority in the polis becomes acceptable only when it's faced with destruction through war. Sophocles and Aristophanes use different means to illustrate the same idea; the ideal Athenian woman's ultimate loyalty lies with her polis. This Greek concept of the proper woman seems so vital when considering Athenian society because both a tragedy and comedy revolve around this concept. The differing roles accorded to

Lysistrata is an anti-war Greek satirical comedic play written by the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes, first staged in 411 BCE. It is the funny account of a woman's mission to end the Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata convinces women of Greece city -states to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands as a means of forcing the men to negotiate a peace from war. The main characters are Lysistrata, Kalonike and Myrrhina from Athens, Lampito from Sparta, and the Choruses of Old Men and Women. I feel the protagonist is of course Lysistrata.

An ancient Greek comedy against the Peloponnesian War, Lysistrata is a story by Aristophanes about the undying efforts of a woman to single-handedly bring the war to an end. The play was first staged in 411 BCE. Lysistrata uses her influence over Greek women, calls them to a meeting then convinces them to deny their husband their conjugal rights to coerce them to desert the war. Lysistrata is a responsible woman from Athens opposed to the war pitting Sparta against Athens. Initially, some women are skeptical about Lysistrata’s plans.

Lysistrata changes the traditional, demeaning roles of females. During ancient Greece, the women for the most part were submissive and obedient in society. The women often endured many hardships within their marriage and social life. The women in the play are uncertain and reluctant to Lysistrata’s plan but they eventually agree to the plan. The

In Aristophanes’ comedic play the protagonist Lysistrata called upon the women in the surrounding areas of Greece to discuss her plans for ending the Peloponnesian war which was keeping their husbands away and causing a financial burden to the city of Athens. By withholding sex and using politics we can clearly see how Aristophanes attempted to portray Lysistrata as a strong woman who tried to reverse the roles of men as providers and guardians by reducing them to subservient and obedient subjects for their amusement. Lysistra organized a meeting with the women of the surrounding cities of Greece and attempted to lay out her plans for stopping the war which has caused their husbands to be away from home up to seven months. (Aristophanes,

Since the beginning of time, women have always been looked down upon mentally. During the time period of The Odyssey and Lysistrata, women were known as less powerful gender. They have never had much say about what goes on around them. Some women were recognized as a sex symbol. In The Odyssey, some women were goddesses that just wanted sex and other women had to stay at home to help raise their kids and do all of the feminine work. Compared to The Odyssey, in Lysistrata, women denied sex against their men to get what they want. In addition, they did not have many political rights and a say so on what goes on in their country. In comparing both of these stories, women show similarities toward each other.

In every joke told in this play and jokes told in present times, they are based on facts of daily life and plays off of them with some minor detail change. Although the play was written by a man and is written towards a male audience, the play is clearly about women and the plausible power they could achieve with the small amount power they already hold. It is important to use Lysistrata as a form of literary evidence when talking about women, since we have such a lack of any referencing women in any way, and here is a play full of diverse female

In the play Lysistrata, Aristophanes imagines the women of Greece "fighting" for peace with a very elemental, and essentially feminine, weapon: sexual blackmail. An Athenian woman named Lysistrata plans to convince women to abstain from sex in order to end the war between the men of Greece. Lysistrata brings the Spartan and Theban women into the plan as well. Her idea was to not just starve the Athenian men of sex, but men on all sides of the conflict. She hoped that this would bring them to the negotiating table to find a solution for peace between their city-states. Lysistrata is a woman of strong convictions who, being tired of the war, its cost, and the continued absence of men from the home because of their presence at the front lines;