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IN THIS BOOK WE WILL concentrate on the role of women in Attica, and more specifically, Athens, during the 5th century. The evidence used will therefore deal primarily with sources which date to the 5th century or earlier with some evidence taken from 4th century sources. The evidence about the position of women in this period derives from a number of sources, including legal, historical, medical, and dramatic writers, rituals, myths and iconographical evidence.
Legal, historical and medical sources do not necessarily offer a true representation of the role and position of women by virtue of their classification as non-fiction. Legal writers and orators are writing for the specific purpose of persuading an audience to think a certain way about an issue. With this aim in mind, they can imply things about, and contain exaggerations of, regular behaviour as part of their rhetoric. Historians have their own bias and may distort historical events and the roles of individuals in those events for effect. But these sources are valuable as indications of the consensus of what society felt its women should be, as an indication of a standard ideal. They reveal what a society thought life should have been.
Medical writers such as Aristotle and the Hippocratics indicate what the medical expectations were for the average healthy woman. They observe a series of regularised bleeding as an indication of her health, as well as betraying through these expectations women’s ideal role in society. Orators and historians will be used less frequently than medical writers. The rules of rhetoric preclude the orators from being taken as non-fiction about social practice. The value of the orators lies in their ability to reveal the idiomatic characterisation of women.
Dramatic authors write with the goal of eliciting an emotional response from the audience. Not only do dramatic authors bring women into the public eye by making them part of the discourse of society via tragedy, they also present female characters in their plays in unacceptable situations which often challenge the audience’s current beliefs. This challenge garners an emotional response from the audience. The discrepancy between the portrayed and the audience’s expectations could not elicit emotion if it did not speak to contemporary difficulties, like the role of women. For example, the myths of Iphigeneia and Polyxena discussed in Chapter 3 illustrate these women In transition from virginity to death. Women are not meant to accomplish this transition from virginity to death; they are not meant to be sacrificed. They are meant to accomplish the transition from virgins to wives and mothers. This dichotomy in the presentation of their situation aroused emotion. Beyond this response, by illustrating what is not meant to happen, these myths also make comment on the social expectations current in society.
Evidence about rituals and myths often derive from later writers such as Pausanias, Callimachus, Apollodorus and Plutarch. The primary problem with these sources for this study is that they date to periods far later than the established time period. Therefore arguments will not be solely based on these writers, but their work will serve as secondary evidence for arguments which have been established by evidence from within the established time frame. Pausanias is the most commonly used of these later sources and often gives evidence about the geographical location of certain cult sites, many of which he relates existed in the fifth century. Pausanias also weaves comments about myths into his narrative and he sometimes provides the original earlier source of the evidence which led to his comments. Sometimes these sources can be dated to the period under consideration. Moreover, Pausanias had access to and recorded information from sources like epics, tragedies, and artists which are now lost. Callimachus, like Pausanias, was drawing upon the accumulated knowledge of his age, and they were both undoubtedly drawing on traditions of earlier scholars and hymns. Both were scholars who would have been widely-read. An unsubstantiated citation from either of these sources will never be relied upon to prove an argument. However, they can be used, as well as references from Apollodorus and Plutarch, as support for an argument.
Iconographic evidence is valuable because it often illustrates the earliest representation of an idea or myth. Often myths or characters represented in this evidence are only attested In literary sources at a later date, so iconographic evidence can corroborate the later literary sources. Therefore most of the sources used in the study are confined to the chronological parameters set forth earlier. However, the later sources will be used to help support an argument previously established from 5/4th century or earlier evidence.
Chapter 2 investigates the gynaecological representation of women and will serve as the foundation of evidence on the normative biological development of a woman. The female body is conceived of not only as a biological concept but also as a social construct which is manipulated by male concerns, such as the need for offspring and heirs. These social concerns are often given a medical overlay and it becomes necessary for the very health of the female that she procreate in the state of marriage. Through the gynaecological evidence it is made clear that for the physical health of a woman she must bleed regularly.
Some of this bleeding transcends the purely social and derives from her very biological nature, as in menstruation. Other bleeding deemed necessary for her health seems social in origin, as it is brought about by male intervention. The bleeding of defloration and the lochia can be considered male-derived. Both bleedings should occur in the marriage arena. The woman is seen to require external intervention from men in the form of intercourse to maintain her health. Marriage and motherhood are recommended as a cure for a plethora of illnesses. All illnesses in the biological entity which was the female body stemmed ultimately from an abnormality in the womb, an explanation which is socially motivated. Therefore the woman’s biological health is given a social overlay.
Some aspects of the woman’s life as seen in these sources transcend the social need for women to procreate. Women could maintain some control over their own bodies. Self-examination and rituals surrounding their transitions such as the arkteia ritual, or the rituals of dedicating garments to Artemis after childbirth, successful or otherwise, provided some modicum of control. In the socially, biologically or female-conceived concept of the female body, rites of passage are universal, and Artemis is the key to these rites of passage.
After considering the biological and social conception of women revealed through the standard for healthy women, the remainder of the study concerns an investigation of the way women are represented in more complex ways through non-technical writers. This evidence will consist mainly of myths and rituals as expressed through myth in tragedy and the practice of rituals.
Myth is most commonly defined as a traditional tale. It is difficult to quantify precisely what myth is in a broad context beyond this basic definition because myths are constantly changing and evolving with the society which relates them. What is quantifiable is that certain themes in myths appear in widely differing societies, suggesting that myths address deeply seated anxieties. Each society then personalises the themes to suit its needs. Tellers of myth may not be able to understand everything about the myth, but the agents can appreciate the place of myth in their own society. Myths function to mediate contradictions and transitions and to display areas of ambiguity. The degree to which myths mediate contradictions is debatable. What is clear, however, is that myths never seem to address problems in society directly.
Ritual is a performative practice which is done habitually. It can be argued that since rituals existed independently from the capacity for speech and language, rituals are older than myth. This can only be assumed because myth cannot be traced back further than the beginning of writing. Myths and rituals are not easily separable and often tend to compliment each other. Both represent aspects of a society’s beliefs about its functioning and existence, and both aid agents in understanding and adjusting to their society. Myth and ritual help to classify phenomena which Individuals can never, hope to understand scientifically or rationally. Myth and rituals, In combination and separately, are used both for the enactment and the reproduction of social practices and structures. Myth and ritual are related through the action of human agents in society, but rituals are just one form of action which reinforces the social code. The message of myths and rituals is aimed at everyone in the society in which they are current.
In terms of the relation of myth and ritual to tragedy, myths are used in the tragedies which occur in the ritual setting of the festival of Dionysos. Tragedy is not clearly a ritual. However, it cannot be proven clearly that tragedy is not a ritual, either, as tragedy does contain ritual elements. Therefore the presentation of myth in the semi-ritual of the tragedy is relevant evidence for the argument that myth and ritual helped explore tensions and explain structures in society. In particular the tension is explored between women in real life using myths in their day to day existence and perhaps viewing them on stage, and women in myth as shown on stage in the ritual atmosphere of the theatre. The ritual of tragedy is a bridge between women in real life and women in myth. Tragedy will be considered next in order to determine that it was a ritual of sorts and therefore applicable as a bridge between women in real life and women in myth.
The ritual performance of Athenian tragedy at dramatic festivals was one of the most important modes of the myths’ impact on society. How and why society dramatised myths, which were illustrated via tragedy, needs to be considered to determine the relationship between ritual performance of myth in the context of tragedy. In tragedy as in oral myths, issues are subverted in curious ways. The practice of displaying these issues on stage implied they had some sort of relevance in society.
The art form of tragedy was unavoidably affected by the society which created and enjoyed it, as were the myths used as the basis for the tragedies as "No art is created free of its social context." However, tragedy was not merely an art, it was also a social institution in the city, just as the law courts were a legal institution. In this way, the institution of tragedy clearly put females in the social arena.
Dramatic competitions, including both comedies and tragedies, took place as part of the religious festivals of the Great, or City, Dionysia, as well as in the Festival of the Lenaia. The urban and rural festivals no doubt provided both entertainment for the populace and worship of the god Dionysos. But can the performance of tragedy be considered a ritual? This question is valuable because rituals in society signify an event of importance, for example, the marriage ritual in Greece.
The rituals surrounding the Great Dionysia began with a procession which took Dionysos’ statue from the temple to the theatre. A torch-lit procession and dancing occurred, which included a phallic procession, the ephebes escorting the sacrificial victim, and the actors and choruses. Before the plays, which began at dawn each day, set rituals took place. These rituals included honours given to citizens and foreigners, the display of tributes given to Athens by her allies, and the introduction of Athens’ war orphans displayed in full armour provided by the state, as well as awards to noteworthy personages. The rituals surrounding the presentation of tragedies and comedies with their social commentary on life in the polis were contained in the Dionysian Festival which itself changed and evolved with reference to the changes in the polis.
Tragedy contains many reversals and paradoxes, which can be seen as falling under Dionysos’ dominion at whose festivals plays were performed. Goldhill points out that although the pre-play rituals have not left their mark on the plays, they were meant to instill a sense of order and ceremony, a confirmation of the normative social values. The plays themselves represented chaos and transgressions of these norms. The rituals before the plays represented the status model of society, in which components of people are ordered in an hierarchical system. The plays themselves, however, represented liminality, because such an hierarchy is disregarded or overturned. The plays were liminal both in their place in the festival and in their content; they represented liminal situations. The contrast is between the rituals beginning the festival which assert social norms of the status society, the tragedies which invert these social norms in a liminal ‘society,’ and the final rituals which end the festival. The transgression of norms and the possible overturn of the status structure which occurs in the form of the tragedies, is hemmed in and contained by the rituals emphasising the norms of status society. This happens at the beginning and end of the festivals, beginning with the dedications and sacrifices and ending with the dedication of the actors’ masks to Dionysos.
Tragedies, which portrayed myths of the transgression of social norms in liminal situations, were contained and surrounded by rituals of the festival. These in turn were constructs of and served to enforce social norms and the status society. The City Dionysia originated as a religious dramatic festival which grew into dramatic competitions of lesser overt Dionysiac connections. These origins were eventually obscured by the tragedies performed in the festival which evolved as a response to the historical period of classical Athens in which they were written, performed and viewed. It would seem, therefore, that the performance of tragedies, despite themselves not containing traces of the pre and post play rituals, is a ritual of sorts. The performance of tragedy is habitual, in that the festivals occurred at the same time each year, but they were not static because the plays themselves changed. Tragedies contained many reversals which can be seen as falling under the realm of Dionysos. Tragic performances do fall under the more general category of rituals when considered in the context of the festivals and the society in which they were produced.
How did women access the world of myth and ritual? Certainly women exchanged myths in their oral interactions in everyday life. Beyond this assumption, which is impossible to quantify, the main method of myth’s impact on society for which we possess evidence is tragic performances. It is sometimes thought that women were allowed into tragedies, but not into comedies. It is not currently possible to settle decisively the question of whether women attended tragic performance. It is likely, however, that they had access to the theatre. Even if they were excluded, women must have been aware of the myths being used in the tragedies, and therefore were part of the production and reproduction of those myths.
It is incorrect to think that despite women’s participation in rituals and possible attendance at the theatre they were wholly ignorant of the contents and did not in some way contribute to the nexus and interaction of myth and ritual. A women’s implicit knowledge of such events, even though all our evidence derives from men, is witnessed in rituals such as: female dedication of toys to goddesses before marriage, all-female rituals like performing the Arrhephoria for Athena on the Acropolis and the arkteia at Brauron and Mounichia under the auspices of the goddess Artemis, the dedication of garments to Artemis after childbirth, religious worship of goddesses and myths about female figures. Myths and rituals were the currency of Athens. It is ludicrous to believe that women, competent agents in Athenian society, were not aware and knowledgeable about myth and ritual and did not reproduce them, just as men did. Women were the ‘second sex' in Athens, but even if the assumption that society was completely male-constructed is accepted, which is a false assumption, women lived in this society and therefore played a part in its functioning and reproduction. The content and context of these rituals renders women’s implicit knowledge explicit.
It is extreme to suppose that women, who were fundamental and indispensable for the production and reproduction of the biological, cultural, religious and social milieu of classical Athens, did not participate in nor have any influence on the conception of society. it may be true that the presentation of women in tragedy, comedy, and in myths authored by men represent the male author’s presentation of the role of women, but this fact does not mean that women did not know of, employ and participate in this presentation of their sex in society.
We have highlighted the issues surrounding the basis of this study, the conjunction between women in real life, women in myths and the mediums in which these two worlds collide, myths and rituals. Women In real life move through a series of rites of passage. Rituals surrounding these rites of passage connect women in their everyday activities with the world of Artemis who oversees transitions of women both in real life and in myth.
Next the social anthropological model employed in this study will be described and the application of this model to these issues will be explained. We will Illustrate how this approach occasions the reading of history with the benefit of allowing and accounting for change in the production and reproduction of society. This benefit is one of the most important reasons for adopting this methodological
framework. The sociological model allows not only the interpretation of the evidence about women’s lives through their rites of passage, it also serves as a tool for approaching the complex society of Athens without undermining that complexity. The model will help elucidate how the physical and social construction of the female body, myths which accumulate about the female, and the rituals which are part of the social construction of the female, actually inform the overall conception of the normative structure for female life. With this model, the nexus of conceptions about females held in society, which all converge under the auspices of Artemis, will prove to be not just a male construct, but actively developed by both sexes as both functioned in society.
The key anthropological concept about the patterns of life in societies is Arnold van Gennep’s formulation of the rites of passage and Victor Turner’s elaboration upon this formulation. Arnold van Gennep discusses the rites and patterns which are associated with a transition from one situation or social existence to another under the general title of rites of passage. The term ‘rites of passage’ can be confusing. It may imply either the entire group of rites of passage that collectively move a female from childhood to full womanhood, or it may imply the rites that make one of the transitions that a female undergoes in her lifetime, for example the rites that are involved in the ritual of marriage, in itself a passage rite. To avoid this confusion, the term ‘total passage’ will be used to refer to the overall transition from girlhood to full womanhood. This ‘total passage’ includes various internal singular ‘rites of passage’, for example, the arkteia and marriage. The total passage of a woman from girlhood to adulthood can be divided into the following three parts: 1) the rites of separation, 2) the rites of transition (marginality/liminality) and 3) the rites of incorporation (aggregation). In certain rituals, different aspects of these three elements are emphasised.
Rites of passage, those that move an individual from one physical or symbolic position to another, developed, in part, to help mitigate the disturbance both to the individual undergoing such a change and to the society in which that individual acts. These rituals are intended to reduce the stressful and disturbing effects accompanying change. Rites of passage may differ in content from society to society, but they are universal.
Individual rites of passage signify that the journey through the total passage is taking place. In this journey an individual must pass through puberty. Puberty was a difficult concept because it ushered in the inception of sexuality and fertility. These two concepts, even today, are cause for much social disagreement and dispute. It Is more accurate to call “puberty rites” rites of initiation, as the girls are being initiated into the sexual world.
Female children soon reach physical puberty indicated by various signs such as the appearance of bodily hair, breast buds and most importantly, the menarche. While physical puberty might be dated from these signs, most especially from the calling card of the first menstruation, the inception of social puberty is more difficult to establish. The variation from race to race and even among individuals of the same race of the time of menarche is great. This variation of the onset of menarche means that puberty is a troublesome and difficult social institution. Therefore, how to categorise girls of a certain age is, and was, often troublesome. Chronological age is often less important than social age. A female could be a physical virgin, in that she had not yet had sexual intercourse. Equally, she could be a social virgin, meaning that although not physically still a virgin, she had yet to fulfil her telos by bearing a child. In many instances, for example as in the arkteia, age-sets are initiated together, irrespective of their exact chronological age or physical maturity. In this instance, exact chronological age is of less importance than the social age of the females.
Within the overall total passage of a female from girlhood to complete womanhood, a certain order of rites of passage occurs. Before the initiation rites can take place, rites of separation from the former childhood state must occur. For the girls participating in this type of ritual, for example the Brauronian arkteia, it serves as an obvious rite of separation from their former status as children.
The Brauronian included the rite of the bears, the arkteia, which is a rite of passage in which the female enters the shrine of Artemis as a child and leaves childhood behind when she leaves the shrine. She is, however, not yet a complete woman; this rite of passage indicated that the female was now ritually prepared to become an adolescent woman. An initiation into the status of adolescent woman, an entrance into the reproductive world, must also occur. This entrance is indicated by a biological event; it is the bleeding of the menarche.
Marriage is ritually and symbolically very important in the life of the female. Marriage is marked by the socially instituted rituals that make up the rite of passage that is known as marriage. It is also marked by the shedding of blood, in what should be the first sexual intercourse a female experiences. The preparation for and onset of the menarche as precursor to marriage and childbearing was emphasised through the ritual of the arkteia and the ritual of marriage. All those stages of preparation culminate in the most important rite of passage for a female in Athens: the birth of her first child.
Van Gennep and other scholars saw a special transitory stage in a female’s life that lasts from marriage until the birth of the first child. Once the biological birth of a child was accomplished, the female in Athenian society was transported out of her state of ‘social virginity’ and assumed the status of fully-fledged gyne (woman). The biological accomplishment of giving birth was also considered a social accomplishment.
The element of the total passage in a woman’s life which will be crucial for this study is the liminal stage. This state begins with the rite of passage from childhood, the Brauronia and its arkteia, which is a rite of separation. The liminal state ends with the marriage rite of passage which also ends biological/physical virginity. The birth of the first child in wedlock, which is a rite of aggregation, and signifies the end of social virginity. The liminal period is mainly characterised by the strange contradiction of the female who is no longer a child not yet producing a child. She is considered ritually capable of bearing a child from her rite of separation from childhood. According to the normative status society, she is socially unable to produce a child until she is married. Since the female was now contained within the structures of status society, as were her reproductive powers, she is no longer liminal. Once married, it was expected that a pregnancy and childbirth would result. This birth ended the female’s social virginity, as with this birth she is most fully inculcated into society as she can ever be.
It will be illustrated that this liminal period was the most ambiguous period for women. Myths about liminal women like the Amazons and young virgins sacrificed were current in the society of 5th century Athens. These myths informed society’s perceptions of the lives of real women who themselves had passed through periods of liminality with success: they had progressed from Parthenos (virgin) to gyne (woman). Their non-normative mythological counterparts had failed to make this transition.
Victor Turner capitalised upon van Gennep’s conception of the individual rites of passage that make up the total passage of individuals in their lifetimes. He particularly expanded his analysis of the liminal phase. The concept of liminality is crucial for the understanding of the place of women in Athenian society, because women move through this heightened ambiguous state in their total passage in becoming a gyne. Individuals in the liminal phase are in a kind of no man’s land, neither here nor there in terms of their social classification. Their liminality is often associated with or conceptualised as being in the womb, death, or bisexuality amongst other things. During this liminal period the structures of status society do not apply, and the possibility exists of establishing any number of alternative social arrangements. A woman who is physically mature enough to menstruate is biologically able to bear a child. The contradiction is between the biological ability but social and cultural inability. Many ambiguities are associated with this ritual stage of liminality through symbols and metaphors. The danger of the possibility of the ambiguous liminal period subverting the norms of structured society is recognised by most societies by the rites implemented to contain this possibility.
Athenian society chose to contain these ambiguous periods by rituals designed to surround and separate them from the normal functioning of quotidian life. Societies build insulating barriers to protect their status structure from being overthrown by liminal arrangements through taboos, rites and rituals. These serve to constrain ritual subjects on whom normative structure loosens its grip, especially during the liminal phase of total passage, in the individual rites of passage, for example, within the rite of passage, which is the arkteia, a liminal state exists. Again, liminality is when a ritual subject is between two social states. Females enter the shrine of Artemis to perform the required rituals of the arkteia. Whilst at this shrine, neither children nor prepared adolescents, these females are liminal. This ‘little liminality’ comes to an end with the rite of passage is concluded; in this case, when the females leave the shrine of Artemis, having completed the ritual. Society transfers its unsettledness concerning changes it naturally undergoes upon the individuals in periods of liminality. The social insecurity arises from the inability to classify liminal subjects in society.
Turner differentiates between two main models of human relations: status and liminality. Status society is structured and has “hierarchical systems of politico-legal-economic positions with many types of evaluation, separating men in terms of ‘more’ or ‘less’. This type of society is norm-governed. Classical Athens is a status structured society. The second type of social model, existing in the liminal no-man’s land, is an unstructured or loosely structured community or alternate society, in this type of arrangement, a sort of anti-structure, individuals are not organized according to any hierarchy. A liminal period is “a sphere or domain of action or thought rather than a social modality.’’ Through a shared experience of liminality, of serving as a bear, for example, a shared bond which is sometimes termed “communitas” can arise between participants. in the liminal situation, the ‘society’ which is exists is characterised by the bonding of communitas. Communitas is a thing of the moment, occurring between the structural layers of society at those period of liminality which it characterises. Liminal ritual subjects progress through the total passage in their lives which Includes various passage rites to become stabilized members in a structural social situation. Women must pass through liminality in the transitions of their total passage to become integrated into the status situation of classical Athens as wives and mothers.
Van Gennep’s ideas about how society orders itself, how it changes, and how it deals with threats to its order were formulated through questions of fixity and flux in the social system. Flux was ordered through various rites of passage. The alternate social arrangement which exists in the liminal period was part of a dialectic through which order would be re-established. It is certainly interesting that social arrangements structured according to status possess, and indeed must possess, periods of liminal social arrangements for certain of its members. For individuals to become incorporated into structured status society, they must move through liminal social situations via rites of passage. Because it cannot be put into a neat category, classed in an easily and readily recognisable and identifiable way, liminality and those in this state appear to threaten the existence of the status quo, that is, of the categorised status-structured social situation.
Liminars are those individuals who exist in the situation of liminality, when being transferred from one social category to another, like Antigone who is ripe for marriage yet unmarried. Liminars can differ from other individuals in liminal social arrangements, called marginals. Marginals are individuals simultaneously in two or more different social categories whose definitions and social norms are often opposed to each other. Marginals in a community like 5th century Athens would include individuals of lowly status due to, for example, a physical disability or extreme poverty, who are both a part of yet separated from status structured society. For example, Philoctetes in Sophocles Philoctetes. after being bitten by a snake which caused an injury that would not heal, was abandoned by his comrades on Lemnos. He was still an Achaean but separated from the rest of the Achaeans not merely by his physical location but also by his physical disability. It seems that Odysseus sees him as a man who is, socially speaking, dead. These types of individuals, often a part of but separate from the society to which they belong, were often selected to serve as pharmakoi in religious purificatory rituals. Marginals and liminars are similar in the respect that both are betwixt and between. This similarity notwithstanding, ritual liminars, unlike marginals, normatively speaking, have a cultural assurance of a resolution to their ambiguous state. Philoctetes had no such assurance. As fate would have it, however, Troy could not be taken without him. A delegation returned to Lemnos for him and he was restored to his position in status society, both physically and socially. In Athenian society, female virgins are in the liminal state from a rite of passage which indicates a rite of separation from the childhood state until the rite of passage that is marriage. After their marriage they are not yet fully integrated into society until they have fulfilled their telos by bearing a legitimate child in a properly attested marriage situation.
Virgins, who are in a liminal state, possess the proper qualities to become victims of sacrifice for the greater good of society. The liminality of young Athenian women of marriageable age but still unmarried exists in a life crisis rite of elevation which is unresolved; the young virgins are liminal in that they belong to neither category or child or woman. Their plight is reflected in the myths of liminal women who pervert the normative social role. Such myths include the Amazons, warrior women who forsake men to live outside usurping their reproductive powers for themselves, and the Danaids who kill their husbands on their wedding night. The goddess Artemis is a goddess of liminality because she is traditionally located in areas between the wild and civilised world both In the literary evidence and in her cultic locations which place her on mountains, and in woods and marshes. She mediates between these two states, serving a bridging function by overseeing the transition of, among other things, young girls.
A female moves through individual distinct rites of passage which themselves signify different stages in her total passage to fulfil her telos. She progresses from a parthenos through the transitions that are rites of passage to become a gyne. This movement was the norm, but this norm was conflicted. Sufficient contradiction and conflict revolved around the issue of women and their transitions from maiden to wife to mother in Athens to claim that Athenian society itself, either consciously or unconsciously, felt and treated the issue of women and their role as complex and difficult. The difficulty which surrounds certain issues in itself is instructive in illustrating how important those issues are to society. Cohen states that “contradiction, conflict and ambivalence are fundamental characteristics of normative systems and the social practices in which they are instantiated. The disparity between the normative Athenian practices found in biological and medical treatises or those actions found in myth and religious rituals serves to highlight the problematisation of the place of women in Athenian society. These contradictions should not be ignored or rationalized as aberrations. It is precisely these ambiguities, conflicts and contradictions between conception and practice which are crucial to the society which created and recreated them over time. They are crucial because they reveal society as organic, not static.
The concepts of the individual distinct rites of passage that comprises the total passage of a female’s life and the contrast between the status and liminality structure of society as indicated is applicable throughout the evidence in this study. Biologically, a woman moves through different states as she sheds her blood different points, from menarche through virginity and defloration in marriage to childbirth. In the case studies on the myths of virgin sacrifice and the liminal behaviour of the Amazons, the normative total passage, as well as such important rites of passage as marriage in structured society are shown to be perverted in a way that disrupts the structure of status society, creating instead liminal arrangements. Most importantly, the goddess Artemis, though all stages of her growth, is always associated with liminality and transitions. As a virgin goddess who never gives birth yet oversees it, she is liminal herself. Artemis aids the transition of women through liminal periods into the status society.
Over the past three decades in Anthony Giddens’ writings, separate threads of his structuration theory can be found in various stages of development. He eventually devoted an entire book to its exposition entitled The Constitution of Society (Cambridge, 1984).
Structuration theory, with structuration meaning the ordering (or structuring) of social relations across time and space, concentrates on social practices, or action, rather than on society as a static whole. In other words, Giddens emphasises and studies action as the most revealing means of analysing society. Giddens defines structuration as “conditions governing the continuity or transmutation of structures, and therefore the reproduction of social systems.” As Giddens intended, structuration theory is to be used not simply to classify the rules of social interaction, but rather to emphasise how these rules are created and recreated by social practice.
While many facets of structuration theory will prove useful, there is a great amount of the theory, in particular its concepts of modernity, which are not applicable here. Just as Turner stresses that his work should not be used as a structural whole system but as individual concepts and thoughts applied to the subject under consideration, Giddens also endorses this approach to his theory.
Within Giddens’ structuration theory there are several concepts which will prove to be of singular importance in this study. His overall stress on action as the principal ingredient in the formulation of society is fundamental, as is his concern with viewing society as a skilled accomplishment on the part of its agents. Giddens’ concept of the structuration of actions, or practices, as producing, reproducing and changing society is also equally crucial. Giddens’ last key concept to be used here, which is inseparable from the concepts listed above, is his belief that all competent social agents are knowledgeable on some level about the society in which they live and act.
Knowledgeability is everything agents know or purport to know about the circumstances of their and others’ actions. The mentally and socially competent agents of action in society at all times can be seen to act on three different levels of knowledgeability: 1) the unconscious, 2) the practical consciousness and 3) the reflexive/discursive consciousness. Unconscious actions are self-explanatory. Practical consciousness would include that knowledge which is employed in continuing through the routines of social life. Practical consciousness is what agents believe they understand about social structures but are unable to quantify verbally: it is just ‘the way things are.’ Discursive consciousness is that understanding agents are able to verbalise about social conditions and the conditions of their own actions, including lying about those conditions.
It is often difficult to distinguish between practical and discursive consciousness. The difference lies in "what can be said and what is characteristically simply done.” Social structure does not exist independently from the knowledge that agents have about what they routinely do. Unconscious actions are less important to Giddens because he stresses the knowledgeability of agents. Regardless of the motivation behind an action, the result of that action is a consequence with which the agents must live. In actuality, he is advocating agents taking responsibility for all their actions, unconsciously motivated or not. Therefore the unintended consequences of agents’ actions are equally as important as the intended consequences. All competent knowledgeable agents always know what they are doing on each level of consciousness, especially on the level discursive consciousness, whether they are able to recognise this fact or not.
Giddens consistently claims that the production of society is a skilled accomplishment of its members. His structuration theory uses his concepts of the knowledgeability of agents and intended and unintended consequences to support this claim. While other theories may explain the production of society with some success, they fail to account for the production, and most especially, to allow for change. It is only with reproduction that a structure In society begins to emerge.
A society is a set of reproduced social practices. These social practices can be thought of as those that: 1) constitute a series of individual acts accomplished by social agents, 2) involve interaction between knowledgeable agents who share the intent of communicating meaning, and 3) comprise structures in that social community. The three approaches to social practice described can be summarised by an analogy with language, which is produced and reproduced in a manner similar to the production and reproduction of society. In society, reproduced practices are constituted as: 1) a series of acts committed by agents; similarly, language is mastered and employed by agents; 2) forms of interaction involve the communication of meaning, similarly, language is used as a method to communicate meaning between agents, and 3) structures pertain to social communities, similarly, language forms “a structure which is in some sense constituted by the speech of a ‘language community.”’
In continuing with the routines of daily life, agents reproduce social conditions which allow them to continue to act in the manner to which they have become accustomed. Giddens stresses the inter-relatedness of the production and reproduction of social life. He claims that although the potential for change exists in every action which naturally contributes to the recreation of society, reproduction is only possible when the circumstances of actions overtime are similar. If, somehow, circumstances in society have changed, be that change due to a natural disaster like a flood or famine or to a socially generated event like war, the circumstances surrounding the origins of agents actions have been altered. This alteration thus leads to a change in the actions of the agents themselves. This produces change in society. In terms of Athenian tragic performances, the dramatist both created and recreated culture. Historical circumstances surrounding the creation of such works would change. The basis of the production of such works would alter in turn. How historical events may have affected the circumstances surrounding the creation of such work, which in turn created society, is explained using Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus.
Bourdieu contributes his concept of habitus, which is an accumulation of actions, or practice. Bourdieu, like Giddens, is interested in the active production by agents, which he calls practice. Individuals’ actions make practice. These actions, when habitual, form structure in society, like law courts or institutions such as marriage. Bourdieu asserts that myths exist and rituals take place because the agents who repeat or enact them cannot afford to speculate logically upon the conditions of their human existence. Rituals function, in one sense, to facilitate the overcoming of the contradictions between the previous state and the state approached (as in marriage, motherhood, death). In Bourdieu’s conception, agents conceal, even from themselves, the true nature and motivation of their practices through resorting to often ambiguous uses of language, laws and rules in their explanations of their practices.
The habitus is a key element of social agents’ cumulative behaviour, that is, of their practice, and not merely manifest in it. Habitus is not a consciously learned set of rules of behaviour, but it is born from a state of habituation of socially acceptable and competent performances produced routinely without a set of rules. It is behaviour performed in a rational fashion without the agents necessarily consciously or deliberately thinking about what they do.
At this juncture it is relevant to distinguish between individual and group habitus. Individual habitus has its existence in individual agents through the cumulative experiences of that agent. There is an emphasis on the importance of the early socialization experiences of that individual agent. Group habitus is a homogeneous entity mutually adjusted for and by a social group. While Bourdieu emphasises that group habitus is not merely the accumulation of the knowledge and experiences of a group, he further states that it is the ongoing culmination of history.
Each individual of the same class, although they undoubtedly did not experience the same events, in the same order, as other individuals of their class, are more likely than any member of another class to have been confronted with the situations most frequent for members of that class. For example, an Athenian wife and mother has an individual habitus, conditioned both by Athenian history and her own individual, personal history. The group habitus she shares with other Athenian wives, having been faced with similar experiences and challenges in life, makes her more similar to them than to, for example, a Persian wife and mother.
Alternatively, the group habitus of Athenians in general can be broken into any number of different categories, such as the group habitus of Athenian women and the group habitus of Athenian men. These categories could be broken down even further, rearranged or reclassified. While the concept of habitus is flexible in this manner, it is valuable in that it quantifies the drive of individuals in society not only to recognise normative social structures but also to reflect and recreate these structures with reference to their personal history. While individuals function with their own structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, they are also simultaneously predisposed to function with a subjective but non-individual system of internalised structures, that is, socially prescribed structures or concepts.
Perception is shaped by history. Athenian males and females shared the same history and the product of that history, group habitus. The ongoing culmination of history is a product of both the social structure and history. This culmination, in turn, supports the production of all the elements that went into its initial creation in the form of practices which reproduce the social structure.
History is the outcome of what agents do, an outcome of their practices. Practices are both the product of habitus and the means by which it is reproduced. Since practice is the product of habitus and agents’ practices make history, which in turn supports the habitus, the status quo is often affirmed in a cyclical manner, in which similar situations arise repeatedly. This cyclical process makes status social structure apparently regular and stable.
New experiences are structured by the habitus by beginning with structures created by past experiences which are then modified to accommodate the new experiences. That is, the most influential past experiences have the most power and influence over the restructuring with the added information of the new experience. The habitus provides a social medium to which it is as pre-adapted as possible. In this manner it insulates itself from threats and challenges creating a world of situations which generally reinforce its dispositions by providing the perfect environment for them. On the level of practical consciousness, practice is both shaped by and a shaper of agents’ actions and behaviour. Dispositions which create the habitus are the basis for the generation of practices. Therefore, an encounter between the habitus and dispositions combined with the opportunities of the social field to which the habitus belongs and in which the agents act produces practices.
Therefore, myths are shaped by the individual habitus of the playwrights or individual relating them, as well as the group habitus of the society in which that myth is told and retold. What is of cultural relevance for a society may be detectable in its myths. Bourdieu claims that change is difficult for all agents because the habitus conditions individuals to have preference for their early experiences in life and to resist any changes that might challenge those notions. Myths are a form of social commentary that invert the structures in status society. How far does a society’s history, which affects its habitus, also affect its myths? Mythology attempts to emulate the openness of history by the ways in which the mythical elements are combined and rearranged to create different permutations. For example, the Amazon myth alone had five different major traditions associated with it, and several other smaller variants. These traditions can, in part, be linked to the differing historical climate in which each was prominent. Because of the tendency of myth to emulate history, or at least reflect the problems inherent in a particular historical period, myth can be seen as a mental operation rather than a historical projection. The openness of a historical system is recreated in myth by the borrowing of historical elements which are integrated into the myth through the various descriptions. When the myth is dramatised, the historical elements and the historical context of the myth becomes irrelevant. It is not important whether any of these events actually happened in history; the very fact that the myth exists suggests that It holds cultural relevance for that society with its history, however neglected or distorted the myth might make it.
Myths reflect history and issues in complex, curious ways which are not uniform. Events in the 5th century which shaped social attitudes, and, in turn, art and literature, are numerous. There was no doubt a post-Persian war high, and Hall argues that at this juncture the Athenians exploited the concept of the barbarian as an opposition to their new-found superiority and greatness. The historical circumstances surrounding Athens in the 5th century allowed for the rise of the art of tragedy in which women were presented in difficult situations.
The application of a model to the nexus of myths and rituals about women's existence affects the conception of women. The model outlined above allows these myths and rituals to be viewed in a way which can help explain how such elements interacted, were recreated and changed by that society. This model will illustrate how such elements combined to Impact upon and inform a woman’s life, as well as the functioning of status structured society. Van Gennep and Turner’s concepts of liminality and rites of passage establish the interplay between the status structured society in which normal women were meant to live and the liminal situations as presented in myths and as occasioned in rituals. These concepts are applied firstly to the biological information to discover a description created and held by a complex society about the complex structure which surrounds the blood a woman sheds at various stages in her life.
Other goddesses have a direct impact on the lives of females at different stages, most notably: Hera in the marriage transition; Demeter as the overall women’s goddess who presides at the Thesmophoria; and Athena whom two virgins, the Arrhephoroi, serve at her shrine on the acropolis in Athens. Despite the varying degree of their relative influence at varying points in the female's life, Artemis is the goddess who presides over all the rites of passage that comprise the total passage of a female from child to complete gyne. These transitions are both part of the normative structure of the total passage a female undergoes and they also enable debate In the forum of tragedy through the agency of myth and ritual. The myth and ritual structure is an organic development, shaped by agents’ experience. Bourdieu stresses that the actions in society which constitute practice, which constitute myths and rituals, feed the habitus, which includes, effects and is affected by the discourse of language, myth, and rituals. All social agents, men and women, conditioned by their habitus, manipulate the normative structures of their society by their actions. It is the habitus which conditions agents to know the limits of the normative structures of their society and how best to manipulate them. Giddens argues that agents are not merely passive conduits of culture but actively use myths and rituals and manipulate habitus to create and recreate society; they are knowledgeable.
In classical Athenian society, there are social expectations of a woman’s role which combine the purely biological, such as the bleeding associated with menarche and the lochia, with the purely social, such as the socially-constructed rituals which serve to surround such biological signs of maturation, like the arkteia before and marriage after the menarche. Myths and rituals articulate these transitions and events in a woman’s life, sometimes through illustration of their opposites. Artemis mediates in the centre of this discourse. Artemis not only presides over the nexus of information about women which contributes to their lives, she embodies it.
Chapter 2
