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+ | Table of Contents | ||
+ | |||
+ | Preface | ||
+ | Acknowledgments | ||
+ | IX | ||
+ | xxvn | ||
+ | PART ONE : ORIGINS AND CONSEQUENCES | ||
+ | |||
+ | I. The Greek Mother-Son Relationship: | ||
+ | and Consequences | ||
+ | {{ : | ||
+ | |||
+ | "This seems to me to explain adequately the presence of ac | ||
+ | tive, aggressive women in Greek tragedy. Gomme points to | ||
+ | the great freedom of action that women have in drama, and | ||
+ | argues that women like Jocasta and Antigone must have been | ||
+ | modeled on contemporary women [1937, pp. 93, 96, 107]. | ||
+ | Kitto makes the same point, observing that the women are | ||
+ | usually more enterprising than the men—that the tragic hero | ||
+ | ines are striking in their vigor, intelligence, | ||
+ | and uncontrollability [i960, pp. 228-29]. But while one may | ||
+ | agree that these women had contemporary models, one need | ||
+ | not assume that such modeling extended beyond the narrow | ||
+ | range of the household. All that a playwright requires for | ||
+ | drama is a vivid memory for his own childhood and family— | ||
+ | especially Greek drama, which is most intensely concerned | ||
+ | with intrafamilial conflict. If this were not true, one would be | ||
+ | hard put to explain how so many of the great heterosexual | ||
+ | dramas of Greek, Elizabethan, | ||
+ | been written by homosexual playwrights." | ||
+ | |||
+ | My first hypothesis—one which assumes | ||
+ | a much earlier change point than that suggested by Feldman | ||
+ | —was that the constellation derived its impetus from the gradual | ||
+ | evolution of patriarchy [cf. Levy, n.d., p. 257], or a sudden | ||
+ | transition from matriarchy to patriarchy. The tradition of a | ||
+ | patriarchal conquest of a matriarchal society is an ancient one | ||
+ | in classical scholarship—based on the evidence of early | ||
+ | matrilineal, | ||
+ | supplanted by their patriarchal counterparts [Murray, n.d., p. | ||
+ | 56; Kitto, i960, pp. 18-23; Briffault, 1959, pp. 84-90]. In | ||
+ | deed, some authors suggest an almost universal transition of | ||
+ | this kind for civilized societies, and there is much supporting | ||
+ | evidence [cf. Briffault, 1959; Campbell, 1959, pp. 315ff.; Neu | ||
+ | mann, 1955]. This is difficult to evaluate, however, since so | ||
+ | much is based on mythology and tradition, and the ontoge | ||
+ | netic experience of primeval matriarchy is universal, and may | ||
+ | provide the source of much of this tradition. For the Greeks, | ||
+ | at any rate, the evidence is real enough. Indeed, there seem | ||
+ | to have been several invasions at various periods by patriarchal | ||
+ | warriors, who, one can imagine, killed the indigenous males | ||
+ | and took the females to wife. Since in all cases the women | ||
+ | probably not only enjoyed a higher status in the older society, | ||
+ | but also partook of a more advanced and sophisticated culture, | ||
+ | one might expect to find here the ideal conditions for a brittle | ||
+ | patriarchy, an anxious and hostile relationship between the | ||
+ | sexes, and a transferring of libido by the wife from husband | ||
+ | to child. The repetition of this experience several times over | ||
+ | a millennium would gradually evolve the kind of cycle I have | ||
+ | described. (72) | ||
+ | |||
+ | II. Symbols, the Serpent, and the Oral-Narcissistic | ||
+ | Dilemma | ||
+ | |||
+ | PART TWO : MYTHICAL DEFENSES AGAINST | ||
+ | THE MATERNAL THREAT | ||
+ | |||
+ | III. Sexual Dominance: Zeus | ||
+ | |||
+ | IV. Masculine Antisepsis: Apollo | ||
+ | |||
+ | V. Matricide: Orestes | ||
+ | {{ : | ||
+ | |||
+ | Orestes' | ||
+ | been pointed out [cf., e.g., Bunker, 1944, p. 198; Friedman | ||
+ | and Gassel, 1951, p. 424] that while Oedipus is the concern | ||
+ | of only three surviving Greek tragedies, Orestes is in seven, | ||
+ | and is treated by all three of the great dramatists. It could in | ||
+ | fact be said that the Orestes myth was the most popular sub | ||
+ | ject in Greek drama, and that the theme of matricide was | ||
+ | one with which the Greeks were peculiarly preoccupied.(162) | ||
+ | |||
+ | The immediate issue of this war between the sexes is whether Clytemnestra' | ||
+ | death at the hands of Orestes was the more heinous crime. | ||
+ | A modern jury would have had difficulty in convicting | ||
+ | Clytemnestra, | ||
+ | esque, passionate women they portrayed so effectively— | ||
+ | Medea, Clytemnestra, | ||
+ | them to exaggerate and punish Clytemnestra' | ||
+ | |||
+ | Why, then, is Medea spared and Clytemnestra murdered | ||
+ | for her crimes? Clytemnestra kills only her husband and his | ||
+ | concubine, and cannot bring herself to do away with her | ||
+ | dangerous offspring; while Medea, with far less provocation, | ||
+ | slaughters her brother, her children, two kings, and a princess, | ||
+ | and attempts the life of Athens' | ||
+ | murder of one's husband, then, outweigh all of these crimes? | ||
+ | The answer is, of course, that it did. The marital bond was | ||
+ | the weakest point in the Greek family, and the murderous | ||
+ | hatred of a wife for her husband was felt to be the greatest | ||
+ | potential danger and had therefore to be guarded against with | ||
+ | the most rigid care and punished with the most compulsive | ||
+ | severity. | ||
+ | Confirmation of this idea may be found in the horror with which Greeks regarded the myth of the women of Lemnos, | ||
+ | who murdered all their husbands and ruled the island by | ||
+ | themselves. To modern readers this is an amusing fancy—one | ||
+ | which, after all, ends happily with the pleasant sojourn of the | ||
+ | Argonauts and subsequent repopulation of the island [Apol- | ||
+ | lonius Rhodius: Argonautica i. 606-909]. Certainly it cannot | ||
+ | compare in luridness with the cannibalistic and incestuous | ||
+ | doings of Atreus and Thyestes, with the hideous deaths of | ||
+ | Pentheus and Heracles, with the crimes and sufferings of | ||
+ | Procne and Philomela, of Oedipus, Cronus, and a dozen | ||
+ | others. But how the Greeks themselves felt about it may be | ||
+ | judged from the following passage: | ||
+ | But the summit and crown of all crimes is that which | ||
+ | in Lemnos befell; | ||
+ | A woe and a mourning it is, a shame and a spitting | ||
+ | to tell; | ||
+ | And he that in after time doth speak of his deadliest | ||
+ | thought, | ||
+ | Doth say, It is like to the deed that of old time in | ||
+ | Lemnos was wrought | ||
+ | [Aeschylus: The Choephori 631-34. | ||
+ | Morshead trans.]4 (164-165) | ||
+ | |||
+ | None of the modes of | ||
+ | response we are examining (with the possible exception of | ||
+ | Apollo' | ||
+ | close to the classical Greek norm as this one; and there is no | ||
+ | character in Greek mythology who seems to epitomize the | ||
+ | fifth-century Athenian as fully as does the hero of Euripides' | ||
+ | Orestes. Whatever kind of run-of-the-mill swashbuckler he | ||
+ | may have been in earlier days, the dramatists molded Orestes | ||
+ | in their own image, and with his tribulations the Athenians | ||
+ | must have experienced an emotional empathy unmatched | ||
+ | even in so powerful a repertory.(192) | ||
+ | |||
+ | |||
+ | VI. Self-Emasculation: | ||
+ | |||
+ | VII. Identification with the Aggressor: Dionysus 1, | ||
+ | The Ritual | ||
+ | |||
+ | VIII. Identification with the Aggressor: Dionysus 11, | ||
+ | The Attack in the Womb | ||
+ | |||
+ | IX. Identification with the Aggressor: Dionysus 111, | ||
+ | The Attack on the Neonate | ||
+ | |||
+ | X. Identification with the Aggressor: Dionysus iv, | ||
+ | The Attack on the Mature God | ||
+ | |||
+ | XI. Maternal De-Sexualization: | ||
+ | |||
+ | XII. The Multiple Defenses of Heracles | ||
+ |