More than Just Gender: The Classical Oikos as a Site of Intersectionality
The aim of this chapter, which forms part of a larger research project, is to highlight the status of different members of the family in Classical antiquity, and their interactions within the private realm of the household and outside the oikos with society in the public realm. Underpinning the paper is the paradigm of intersectionality, which allows us to analyse how characteristics such as gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality and age relate to each other and influence outcomes, including markers of difference within the Classical oikos. The key question for the paper is how multiple discrimination in the oikos was constructed along the lines of the social categories: gender, class, age, ethnicity and sexuality. For this chapter, I will illustrate the usefulness of this perspective based on intersectionality with reference to two literary sources: Works and Days by Hesiod and Oeconomicus by Xenophon, which both discuss the same subject, the Greek oikos.
Intersectionality as a model can be traced back to the 1960s and 1970s when scholars studying women of colour first employed the concept. It has since attracted interest not only among scholars devoted to radical black feminism but also within several other fields of research. The concept was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, and has subsequently often seen use in research on subjects linked to ethnicity and women’s studies.1 The versatility of the concept is today displayed by its use not only in gender studies but several other fields such as education, law, sociology and theology, and it has been taken up also by European scholars representing a number of other fields of research.2 While intersectionality has a wide appeal and use, it might not contribute to a precise definition. However, intersectionality’s broad applicability is also the major advantage of the concept. We may agree that what intersectionality does, rather than discussing social hierarchies of gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality and age as isolated phenomena, is to allow us to investigate how they mutually construct one another.3 Intersectionality can therefore be regarded as an analytical tool for understanding multiple discriminations created by the intersection of different categories present in the oikos including: gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality and age.
The usefulness of intesectionality as an analytical tool within archaeology has been explored by Margaret Conkey, who discusses the intersection between feminist archaeology and indigenous archaeology.4 Within the field of Classical studies the concept has, so far, been rather more neglected. Yet, as argued in a recently constructed educational platform, the Intersectionality Tool Box (ITB),5 intersectionality is applicable to research questions related to gender within the Classical world. Henrik Berg discusses how Athenian masculinities were constructed and suggests that a perspective drawing on intersectionality can lay bare the construction of male identities.6 Such encouraging remarks provide justification enough to move forward. Thus, with a view to illustrating the multifaceted interaction between different groups within ancient Greek society, in the following discussion, intersectionality will be applied for analytical ends, focusing on the members of the ancient Greek oikos.
How can intersectionality be studied within the realm of the Classical oikos? Especially as pointed out by Lin Foxhall there is a limitation concerning contexts that can be explored, because the sources are limited and produced by free, adult, male citizens.7 Or, as pointed out by Marilyn Katz, when female related issues are discussed, there is a tendency to focus on citizen women, something that may be explained by the fact that hardly any information survives about women of other classes.8 The concept of intersectionality has seen frequent and wide use in women’s studies, but as pointed out by Leslie McCall, methodology has been rather neglected in the academic discussion of intersectionality. She suggests that it is necessary to use a greater range of categories to understand the intersection within and between groups.9 This is also relevant to the study of the Classical world, and an early application of ITB concerns the analysis of iconographical material, primarily constituted by black and red figure Classical vases.10
The starting point for any study of intersectionality is that a category of identity takes its meaning as a category in relation to another category. As such, this approach highlights the intersection between groups that go beyond gender relationships between men and women. By applying intersectionality to various sub-categories beyond the male–female dichotomy, it transpires that there are situations or relations where the female can also be the dominant party. On this a priori basis, it becomes clear that by applying the paradigm of intersectionality to sub-categories other than the usual ones associated with a single category, for example gender or age, we are able to extend our knowledge of how oppression and discrimination was constituted within the Classical oikos and in the Classical world more generally.
In addition to the original focus on the role of gender, therefore, we should avail ourselves of the possibility of identifying sub-categories in the literary sources at our disposal. While it may serve to make ancient society stand out as more complex than indicated by simple dichotomies, in the end we will be rewarded with a fuller understanding on how social relations were constituted. As a further help in this quest, one may also contemplate the use of parallel or contrasting cases across time and space, be they ancient or modern, drawn from the Aegean world or elsewhere.
The Classical oikos occupies a principal position within studies of Athenian society and the concept has for long been an issue for discussion.11 The notion is strongly associated with values connected to social hierarchies and ideological constructions. The oikos was not only fundamental to social organization but also necessary for the ideological construction of the polis. According to Fisher the family was the basic unit and the primary focus of the activities and interests of men and women. Both prosperity and honour were intimately bound up with the concept. The values and the importance of the honour of the family may have even been greater than that of the polis and the laws.12 Also Lin Foxhall agrees that the oikos was fundamental for the ancient Greek society; however, she also demonstrates the complexity of political and private roles with every Athenian belonging to both polis and oikos, entwined causing problems.13 The importance and centrality of the oikos is according to Cynthia Patterson displayed by Demosthenes in his case against Neaira where the legitimate marriage is the important factor linking the Greek family to the polis. According to Patterson the public significance of the family should not be neglected.14 Sarah Pomeroy defines the oikos as the basic unit of the Greek society and the polis was a community of oikoi rather than individual members. Pomeroy also regards the Oeconomicus, by Xenophon, as a reflexion of normative and idealized thoughts on the Greek household.15 The distinction between oikia and oikos has in legal contexts been observed by Douglas M. MacDowell who associates oikos with ‘property’ or ‘family and oikia with ‘house’.16 The concept of oikos is, within the current research project, defined as an extended family unit, understood as including also the non-citizen persons, and the property that was part of this family unit.
The oikos was vital for the survival of the fundamental dichotomy of Athenian society: the house as the space for the private life of the citizen was associated with women, whereas the male members of the oikos were part of the public, masculinized sphere.17 Gender relations and the spatial division within the realm of the oikos are illustrated in Classical texts by authors such as Xenophon and Lysias. Later, the Roman architect and author Vitruvius pointed out as a specific phenomenon characterizing the Greek house was an area called the women’s quarter, gynaeconitis. The attitude displayed by Classical and later authors was, according to Ian Morris, no new invention after all it is possible to find already in the work by Hesiod who in Works and Days described how the young female member of the house stays indoors with her mother in the inner room.18 This, essentially normative, picture of the social life within the Greek house has been dominant within research. As pointed out by Lisa Nevett, the use of andron and gunaikôn has been interpreted as evidence of gender specific locations within the house. According to her analysis, the problem is rather more complex than this and she concludes that a possible way to look behind the stereotyped picture of Greek houses is through a more detailed study of archaeological remains. As she goes on to argue, physical remains and artefacts are more appropriate to use as evidence of the actual organization of Greek households, whereas the textual evidence has misled us.19 The emerging picture of economic stratification, as made evident in the housing pattern, could therefore be of some significance.20 This conclusion with respect to economic stratification displayed in architecture is of importance to our wider study. For now, let it suffice to note that the economic status of the household can be assumed to be of importance as we proceed to applying the paradigm of intersectionality to the material at hand. The hypothesis that the level of intersectionality within the oikos is connected to the economic status of the house will be made subject to further inquiry. In short, we would expect that intersectionality should be more pronounced within wealthier households. This means that the size and spatial complexity of a house cause intersectionality to vary.
The earliest written source on the function of the oikos and the obligations and status of the individual members of the family is described in the Archaic epic text Works and Days, by Hesiod. The relations within the oikos of a peasant living in the Boeotian countryside, described by Hesiod in this early work created around 700 BC where he gives advice to his brother, can be contrasted, not least with respect to issues of social status, with that contained in the Oeconomicus (written by Xenophon in the fourth century BC). In the latter, we follow the discussion between Socrates and his friend Critobulus, two representatives of the upper social class, on estate management which include all members of the oikos, irrespective of status. The text by Xenophon is regarded as an important and didactic contribution to our understanding of several aspects encompassing the Classical oikos. Xenophon was in exile in Sparta when he wrote about the management of the Athenian oikos. Also, it needs to be remembered that the Oeconomicus describes a fourth century rather than a fifth century oikos.21 The images projected by Hesiod and Xenophon may be idealized versions of the Greek family group and chronologically misaligned. Even so, it can be argued that both these texts can be used as important sources for our understanding of intersectionality and multiple levels of discrimination.
Ian Morris has suggested that the transformation of house design between 750–600 BC display hardening gender ideologies.22 In the following it is argued that by applying the concept of intresectionaly these attitudes are displayed on several levels already in the works by Hesiod. In his Works and Days, the intersection between gender, sexuality and age is made visible in the relationships between the shy virgin to be married to a man – most probably many years her senior. A first instance to be observed, in addition to that of age and gender, is the creation of the virgin, ordered and controlled by the elder heavenly ruler Zeus.23 Further, Hesiod in the Theogony wrote of the ethnicity of women. Hesiod is very clear that Pandora is the ancestor of evil women, the scourge of all men on earth.24 Indeed, in both epics by Hesiod, women are unambiguously described as the source of problems affecting men and the earth in different ways. Hesiod describes how hard man’s life is and how he should avoid poverty and misery and that all these disasters that affected men on earth came to be permanent after the acceptance of a young Pandora as a gift to Epithemeus. This acceptance was equal to a radical change of life on earth, previously lived without evils and harsh labour or cruel disasters and aging. But when Pandora lifted the lid from the pithos she scattered these evils about and devised misery for men and earth.25 According to Lillian E. Doherty it is remarkable that Hesiod does not call Pandora the mother of humans but only of genos gunaikôn, the ‘race of women’.26 Indeed, the notion of genos gunaikôn, if interpreted as identification of women as a group not part of a society with the male as norm, we may read another category of intersection, that is ethnicity. The use of genos gunaikôn may be positioned due to the negative view among Greeks of the ‘other’ as barbarians, and in the case of Hesiod women are synonymous with the ‘other’. From making this observation, we may read how Archaic women were simultaneously positioned as virgins, women, young and ethnically different, and thus woman became the locus of the multiple intersection of gender/age/sexuality/ethnicity. In short, the texts by Hesiod make clear the low status that even married women probably had and the multiple dimensions of discrimination of her in Archaic society.
Traditionally, the ideal Classical family has been regarded as an entity formed through marital and blood ties, composed of a married couple and their own biological children and the protection of the bloodline was therefore of major interest for the whole society.27 We may find the importance of a son to manage the estate inherited already in the Archaic epic Works and Days and later in Oeconomicus, in both of which the importance of children as support for ageing parents is mentioned.28 It is interesting to note that both Hesiod and Xenophon mention the combination of slaves and children in aiding the elderly. Hesiod advises the peasant not to employ a maid with a child, as a nursing mother is an obstacle.29 In the Oeconomicus, we find a description of the house as divided into women’s and men’s quarters and an equally important lesson is to keep slaves separated so as not to give them the possibility to breed without the permission of their master. The control was apparently seen as necessary; according to the didactic text, honest slaves became more loyal if they had children, whereas bad ones became more problematic.30 In other words, here we find an intersection constructed by gender, age and class displaying multiple discrimination of un-free women in particular and we may conclude that this is irrespective of whether we speak of Archaic or the later Classical society.
Both texts suggest that marriage was formed between two individuals. >From Hesiod’s Works and Days, we learn that the suitable age for a man to be married was around 30, whereas the appropriate age for a girl was in her teens. She should also be a virgin – giving her husband the possibility to teach her virtuous behaviour. In Hesiod’s description the husband oversees the activities of the oikos including his young wife.31 The advice is possible to follow also in the text by Xenophon who writes that the wife of Ischomachus was not even 15 when she came into the house, and ‘she had spent her previous years under careful supervision so that she might see and hear and speak as little as possible’.32 The intersection of age, sexuality and gender is obvious and we find that both Hesiod and Xenophon describe a setting where marriage was between two individuals of very different age and status.
Sexuality as a subject is avoided neither in Hesiod nor Xenophon and the moral behaviour of the wife is emphasized in both of the didactic texts. We need not doubt that the reputation of the girl as well as her behaviour was of importance already in Archaic society and the opinion of the neighbours is apparently not to be neglected.33 Also in the later work, Oeconomicus, we find similar sentiments: Ischomachos, the husband, does not quite approve of his young wife powdering her face and using plenty of rouge. Ischomachos is quite clear that this is not acceptable for a wife and he advises her not to spend her time like a slave; instead she should stand before the loom and supervise the household.34 The association of good virtues and the loom is already found in the Archaic society, represented by Works and Days,35 and we may observe this attitude displayed in Classical vase painting where the mistress of the house is depicted with a loom, often surrounded by un-free women. The control of female sexuality is fundamental not only to the oikos but to society as a whole and it is clear that the sexuality of the honoured wife should be distinguished from the sexuality of un-free women. The difference in views concerning the sexuality of free and un-free women is easily seen in Xenophon, where it is demonstrated that the slave has little choice but to submit.36 The intersectionality registered in these passages is composed of age, gender, sexuality but also ethnicity and class as slave women were non-citizens and un-free.
According to Sarah Pomeroy, the Oeconomicus represents the changing view of women in the fourth century where we find better educated women taking part in the liberal arts and professions. In other words, women began to appear as artists, philosophers and so forth. The Oeconomicus was a story about the education of a young girl, now married and expected to take responsibility of the oikos. The text also indicates that within marriage the status of women seems to be more equal and the mutual goal of husband and wife was the increase of property.37 Pomeroy considers the Oeconomicus to mirror a view of the oikos as site released from ‘natural hierarchy among human beings according to gender, race, or class’.38 Xenophon expresses, according to her, a view that men, women and slaves, ‘potentially have the same virtues, vices and talents’.39 The importance of the Oeconomicus for our understanding of the oikos and the world outside the estate is also emphasized by Sture Linnér in his comments to a Swedish translation of the Oeconomicus. We find, according to Linnér, a text that features a set of very conservative values but also a measure of radicalism. The virtues of the wife are primarily a consequence of Ischomachos teaching her, the importance of which rests with the fact that he will benefit. However, the wife is treated with respect and her importance for the supervision of the economy of the household is emphasized. An interesting comment made by Linnér is that by extending the responsibility of his wife it follows that the husband was able to spend more time outside the oikos, located in public life where the important decisions were made.40 On the other hand, might it not be the case that the extended responsibility and authority of the wife was rather a result of the husband making public life a priority? By so doing, he simply has to grant his wife greater leeway, towards which end his teaching her the relevant virtues was rather a way of ensuring that his authority was maintained. Returning to Linnér’s analysis, he also makes the observation that the wife is not given a name and she is not regarded as an individual: instead the wife is an anonymous person in the text. As Linnér aptly notes, the seemingly realistic description of an equal relationship between the wife and husband of the oikos, is instead an idealized vision of society.41
The value of these two sources rests on the possibility that the two texts display traditions connected to the organization and survival of the family under rather different circumstances. Put differently, the manner in which the household operated may have changed over time as we move from Archaic to Classical times – and that these circumstances changed (presumably slowly) irrespective of the social status of the household. Therefore, the question of whether we may identify different attitudes connected to wealth and status may provisionally be answered in the positive. It is, after all, quite obvious that both the wife and husband in Hesiod’s Archaic family were forced to work hard in order to ensure the survival of the family. There was little or no time for pleasures such as we find in the Oeconomicus, where the couple seems to have had time for other duties than those associated with hard work in the fields.
Yet such conjectures, no matter how likely, cannot be established beyond doubt. It would therefore be of more than passing interest to pursue a wider range of literary texts. Thus, for the wider project on intersectionality currently in progress, the texts under investigation range from Archaic lyric, although very fragmentary, such as Semonides, Anacreon and Sappho, to Classical works representing different literary genres. For the Archaic period Hesiod is, of course, a major source allowing us to approach the family values of that time in greater detail as illustrated above – and he has few peers. This observation must not be allowed to conceal that other sources exist. For instance, despite its normative orientation the legislation of Solon, as related by Plutarch, is of significance to our understanding of how Archaic society worked. Valuable Greek historical texts that relay information on status and relations from later periods include, in addition to Xenophon, works by Thucydides and Herodotus. Furthermore, the philosophical texts by Aristotle and Plato are immensely interesting as documents of moral values predominant within the aristocratic circles in the fourth century. Like Greek comedy, Greek orators such as Aeschines, Demosthenes and Lysias allow ample insight into the life of individual members of society, not only young upper-class rascals drifting on the streets of Piraeus insulting both women and men, but also the life of poorer citizens, non-citizens (metoikoi), slaves, young and old. The information contained in the speeches is naturally subjective in nature and formulated with the intention to persuade. However, the information contained therein is of considerable interest as we may get a glimpse not only of the laws of interest in the specific case, but we may also get closer to the persons involved and thereby gain insights into the status of the individuals involved. Here intersectionality affords a possibility of applying a holistic approach where the different categories, gender, age, sexuality, class and ethnicity meet within the oikos. As such it facilitates our attempts to identify relationships of inequality within the Classical oikos and the Classical polis.
For now, however, suffice it to note that already the limited examples approached in this short article has served to extend our knowledge on, and understanding of, inequality and discrimination within the oikos. As hierarchical as the ancient household may have been, it cannot be reduced to a discussion of the issue of gender alone. Instead, by considering gender in relation to other social identities – such as class, ethnicity, sexuality and age – and how they mutually construct one another much can be gained to enrich our understanding of the oikos.
Crenshaw, 1989; 1991 for original concept from which developed among other Hill Collins, 1998; Flores, 2000 and Ringrose, 2007. |
For example Lykke, 2003; Lewander, 2004; McMullin and Cairney, 2004; De los Reyes and Mulinari, 2005; Phoenix, 2006; Shields, 2008; Roos, 2008; Sjöberg, 2008a and Valentine, 2007. |
Hill Collins, 1998, p. 63. |
Conkey, 2005. |
Sjöberg, 2008b. |
Berg, 2010. |
Foxhall, 1998, p. 123. |
Katz, 1992, pp. 79–80. |
McCall, 2005, pp. 1784–1785. |
Sjöberg, 2008b. |
Foxhall, 1989; Cartledge, Millett and Todd, 1990; Cohen, 1991; Boegehold and Scafuro, 1994; Gardner, 1996; Schnurr-Redford, 1996; Foxhall and Lewis, 1996; Harrison, 1998; MacDowell, 1989 and Cox, 1998. See Katz, 1992 for principal research questions. |
Fisher, 1976. |
Foxhall, 1989, p. 22, 43. |
Patterson, 1994, pp. 210–211. |
Pomeroy, 1994, pp. 31, 33, 41. |
MacDowell, 1989, pp. 10–11, 21–22. |
Cohen, 1991, pp. 70–97 and Pomeroy, 1997, pp. 29–31. |
Morris, 1999, pp. 307–308. |
Nevett, 1995; 1999. |
Nevett, 1995. |
Pomeroy, 1994, pp. 5, 31–33. |
Morris, 1999, pp. 306, 311. |
Hesiod, Theogony, 570–590 and Hesiod, Works and Days, 70–85. |
Hesiod, Theogony, 590–591. |
Marquardt, 1982, pp. 287–288 and Lefkowitz, 1986, pp. 113–116. |
Doherty, 2001, p. 136. |
Ogden, 1997. |
Hesiod, Works and Days, 376–377 and Xenophon, Oeconomicus VII, 12–13. |
Hesiod, Works and Days, 602–604. |
Xenophon, Oeconomicus IX, 5–6. |
Hesiod, Works and Days, 695–700. |
Xenophon, Oeconomicus VII, 4. |
Hesiod, Works and Days, 695–700. |
Xenophon, Oeconomicus X, 2–13. |
Hesiod, Works and Days, 779. |
Xenophon, Oeconomicus X, 13. |
Pomeroy, 1994, p. 58 |
Ibid., p. 66. |
Ibid. |
Linnér, 2003, pp. 26–28. |
Ibid. |
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