For Aristophanes, Women ARE the Last Laugh.

I first heard of Aristophanes last year while studying English Literature in Belgium. I studied him then as one of the founding fathers of comedy, especially because of his use of satire and innuendo. When I read Lysistrata for this class, however, I was shocked by how blatant and sometimes vulgar Aristophanes’ writing actually is. The plot seems tame enough at first, with the Spartan women trying to shield their nation from war. However, Aristophanes does something different by making it clear the women will also miss the “prick” greatly while depriving their husbands of sex. This reversal from men in power to females in power provides the comedy in Lysistrata, and of course the play ends with a song and dance, and women placed back into the seat of inferiority, which, back then, was how it ought to be.

Witty banter between the women and men throughout the play probably kept the Greek audience laughing. Also, Aristophanes knew how to release the sexual tension between his characters, filling their speech with symbols and metaphors, such as the reference to the men carrying a “torch” while the women have buckets of water to “put out the fire”. The tension even escalates to physical fighting between the men and women. What is nice about this play is that it ends in true comedy fashion, with the problem resolved (the men agreed to end the fighting) and the women getting their way. However, the women have to go back into the same subservient societal position they were in when the play began.

What is most disturbing to me is the women, including Lysistrata herself, are actually happy to resume their duties as wives and lovers. In a liberating way, Aristophanes revealed that women, too, enjoy the pleasures of sex and marriage. On the other hand, it almost makes the women look licentious in their desires for sex, especially when it is revealed Myrrhine has left her infant child home, without care or food, for six days while the women held fort at the Acropolis. Aristophanes’ original concept is liberating to women in its pure form, but in the workings of comedy the women lose all potential for respect and are used mainly as a vehicle to achieve a haughty laugh.

Lysistrata: A Critique of Both Sexes?

There are two obvious reasons why Aristophanes' Lysistrata might be banned. The first, its explicit sexual content, is fairly straightforward. Aristophanes makes no attempts at subtlety (i.e. “my victuals have lost their savour. And all because of this erection that I can't get rid of!”). The second reason, however, proves slightly more complex: the play seems to present to present a radical reversal of gender roles. Yet this conclusion might be inaccurate. Indeed, while the Lysistrata appears to celebrate women as the superior sex, I would argue that the play actually critiques them just as harshly as it does men.

For example, when Lysistrata initially proposes her plan, her companions reveal themselves to be equally as lustful as their counterparts. For example, Cleonice begs “Anything, anything but that! … to rob us of the sweetest thing in all the world, Lysistrata darling!” The majority of the women take the oath begrudgingly, and as the play progresses, have an increasingly difficult time upholding it. In a particularly humorous scene, several of them attempt to escape to their husbands, only to be contained by Lysistrata's iron will. Collectively, they are not very strong; it is only through Lysistrata's guidance that they are able to succeed.

Additionally, although the men in this play exhibit a baser, more obvious kind of corruption in their desire to fight, destroy, and overpower, the women are not faultless. In fact, they are perhaps worse because they demonstrate both their ability to equal the men in vulgarity (“Come on then; I wait you with unflinching foot, and no other bitch will ever grab your balls”) as well as their ability to manipulate. While they do manipulate their men for an ultimately noble end, they nonetheless reveal the cunning of which they are capable. Furthermore, while withholding sex could be viewed as clever, that this is the only significant tool they possess is indicative of their societal status: women are objects, not people.

If anything, the play celebrates a single woman, Lysistrata, rather than women as a gender. Lysistrata is the force that makes the play possible because she keeps the other women focused. Interestingly, however, Lysistrata seems to me somewhat sexually ambiguous. Early in the play, she and her cohorts engage in what could be interpreted as a homoerotic dialogue. She asserts her dominance over her companions in a stereotypically masculine way, and her language is also fairly masculine, employing terms like “wrench, strike, tear, insult” to motivate the others. Finally, Lysistrata does not appear to be married, or attached to any man at all. I wonder whether or not she would have been as able a leader if she had been romantically involved?

Modern Sexual Politics in Ancient Greece

The idea that Lysistrata was written in 410BC is a bit mind-boggling considering the modern thoughts of female independence and control as well as the fact that pacifist ideas are thrown about throughout the text. If I had not known that Aristophanes wrote the piece, I would assume that it was a modern comedic farce on the one-track mind of men.

Lysistrata is a thoroughly modern female protagonist who finds the key to possessing power over men and having them listen to a woman, an idea that I would have thought impossible in the setting and the time that the play was written. And now considering all of these elements it is apparent why this work would be a part of the banned books tradition considering how stifled female independence was for thousands of years after this play was written.

Perhaps the first and central point of contention was the gathering of the women of Greece and the pact to withhold sex from their husbands until peace was reached. Unfortunately for the time period this was really the only bargaining chip available to these women who were considered to be at the basest level of society or second-class citizens in the city and in their own home.

Aristophanes makes it clear that women are victims of their own desire and should only be listened to on occasion and yet Lysistrata gets the attention of all of the men of Greece who follow her will in the end. This aspect is a bit troubling in that it is not as easy to decipher whether or not this is a fully positive portrait of women. On the other side of the sexes though it is clear that men are not always painted in the most positive light either being that they are willing to bend to a woman’s word because of lack of sex, and that alone.

Perhaps the best scene to show the faults of both sexes is the standoff between the chorus of old men and old women who hurdle petty insults and obscenities whilst having a fire versus hot water standoff at the gate. Interestingly, again women are triumphant in this incident and yet they are also as obscene, if not more so than men. This story seems to suggest that one must play dirty in order to get what they want. And yet this is the way all mankind fight or is it just the way women fight? That is something I grappled with while reading this play; I wondered whether it was a more positive or more damning portrait of women.

In our modern society women hold positions of power without the use of sexuality and yet in the world of entertainment, in which most young girls get their portrait of what it is to be a woman, there are pervasive images of sexuality as a means of power. One would think of Madonna, who for years molded an image of both female sexuality and well as fierce and staunch independence. It would suggest to young girls that the key to having powerful positions in society is via sexual exploitation and that is a major factor in Madonna’s success and the success of those who followed her including Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera who put sexuality at the center of their public image. The entertainment industry would suggest that the ideas of Lysistrata still permeate our society and I am not sure if that is a good thing.

Lysistrata: a sexist piece?

At first glance Lysistrata comes across as a kind of “girl power” type of piece. I know it’s written in 410 BC, but in this play the gender roles are more concrete than ever. The sexes are pitted against each other and don’t seem capable of anything outside of their gendered nature. The first hint of a sexist reading comes as Cleonice asks, “How should women perform so wise and glorious an achievement, we women who dwell in retirement of the household, clad in diaphanous garments of yellow silk and long flowing gowns, decked out with flowers and shod with dainty little slippers?” (pg. 3). In such a question, Cleonice defines women as people incapable of anything “wise and glorious,” not to mention merely “achieving”. Furthermore, she objectifies women by describing them by where they “dwell” and what they are wearing when they do. Their personalities, strengths, gifts, responsibilities, and any sort of human qualities are missing from such a description. Lysistrata, the seemingly progressive and even radically feminist character, affirms such a definition by saying, “Ah, but those are the very sheet-anchors of our salvation,” (pg. 3) creating an association between femininity and weakness, but also between femininity and hyper sexuality. Once again, more women affirm these views of women, that, antiquated or not still affect us today; in response to living without sex, they cry, “Anything, anything but that! Bid me go through the fire, if you will-but to rob us of the sweetest thing in all the world” (pg. 7). The plan is a seduction, to use the only means women appear to have, their sexuality to lure their uncontrollable, violent men into a peace treaty with one another.

The women are not the only ones locked into the limitation of defined gender roles. The men, depicted as wild beasts brainlessly fighting each other by the women, affirm such a viewpoint. In what might have been a discussion, anger brews, and the Magistrate says, “I cannot keep my temper!” (pg. 21) and threatens, “You would have been reduced to silence by blows then” in response to Cleonice’s refusal to be silent. The men continue to act animalistically, incapable of the so-called reason the women try to coax them into seeing. The battle of the sexes is not a means to the end of equality, but merely a disturbing separation of the same species, who due to their different roles are incapable of seeing eye to eye without the end of sex. Sexuality becomes the driving force once again defining women as sex objects and men as animals not able to overcome their desire.

Who is to blame for a morally comfortable reading?

Based on the divergent views expressed in the essays on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a conversation between Jane Smiley and Toni Morrison would likely spiral into a lively debate.  Smiley descries Twain for mirroring the actions of his protagonist in the narrative and ‘using’ Jim, saying that “they really don’t care enough about his desire for freedom to let that desire change their plans” (358). Smiley interprets Twain’s lack of direct address of the inherent evils of Jim’s situation as a cowardly, deliberate avoidance of the heart of the matter: glaring social injustice.

Interestingly enough, Morrison, who, unlike Smiley, is African-American, has a decidedly more positive interpretation of Twain’s emotionally removed approach.  Morrison sees the lack of preachy, subjective narration and emotional bias as inviting rather than socially stilted and conspiratorial.  She writes, “Much of the novel’s genius lies in its quiescence, the silences that pervade it” (386).  By being evasive, Morrison argues that Twain shocks the reader—or rather, gives the opportunity for a socially conscious reader to feel shock.  After reading the tragically beautiful and troubling Beloved, it makes sense to me that the ultimately private sphere of the central social mission in Huck Finn infuriates Morrison.  But to Morrison, this fury is indicative of great writing rather than actual social obliviousness or worse, self-willed ignorance.

Reading these close, impassioned interpretations of the novel’s distinctive narrative style caused me to pause and reflect on my own reading of ‘this amazing, troubling book.’ My findings delivered a slight blow to my integrity: I realized that in my own reading, I got caught up in the adventure, character development and humor, essentially glossing over the more substantial social considerations that understatedly pervade the narrative.  Smiley’s view allows me to blame to the author and narrator for facilitating such a light reading.  Morrison would politely encourage me to assume full responsibly myself.  The invitation for an enlightened reading was there, so why didn’t I, a relatively socially conscious individual, take it and run with it?  I read this novel in high school—could that have influenced a subconsciously ostentatious reading of a “lower-level” novel by a college student?  Can I assign blame to my own social circumstances, being immersed in a culture that so often meets the discomfort of residual hostilities between blacks and whites with either perversely patronizing advantage (i.e. the affirmative action policy being descried as reverse discrimination by black students whom it materially advantages but emotionally demeans) or by taking false comfort in the false statement that because this is America, social equality has already been achieved?

Kolvenbach’s essay promotes “the Jesuit educational standard to ‘educate the whole person of solidarity for the real world’” (34).  I think that my relatively beach-read approach to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn indicates that a more conscious effort must be made to foster “compassion that deserves the name of solidarity” (35).  Morrison’s response to the novel was so profound because she saw silence as a personal challenge.  Her reading and the Kolvenbach essay offer a more direct challenge: moral responsibility is ultimately in our own hands.  The integrity of our own readings and social behavior rests on whether we confront uncomfortable social inequalities directly or shy away from them, quietly scapegoating the author or our circumstances for our own misstep.

Racism in Huck Finn

While I don’t agree with Jane Smiley’s general view of Huck Finn, she does bring up several interesting and valid points regarding racism in relation to the novel. The first of these for me is when she points out that “to give credit to Huck suggests that the only racial insight American of the nineteenth of twentieth century are capable of is a recognition of the obvious—that black, slave and free, are human.” I see where she’s coming from, and she’s right. That should be obvious to everyone. But the fact of the matter is that it certainly was not at the time the novel was written, and, despite what some may think, at times it even is not today. I appreciated her discussion of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel which is usually glossed over in history class more as an artifact than a legitimate work of literature. But Stowe and Twain were writing from opposite sides of the story. Stowe wrote from the slave’s point of view in order to personalize and document the slavery of her time. I believe Twain wrote to personalize and document the racism of his time, and both wrote to expose the contradictions and cruelty that come with both. The fact of the matter is that Huckleberry does start out as a racist, but not only his feelings change by the end of the novel, as Smiley suggests, but Morrison believes that he changes from an “underground activist to a vocal one.” Huck does truly mature in this point, at the sale of the Wilks slaves and the separation of the family, and in more ways than one. At this point is when he decides for sure to retrieve the money and attempt to give it back to the Wilks family. In doing so, he puts not only himself but also Jim in danger, but he does it because it is the right thing to do. He is, in effect, thinking of someone besides himself, and even besides the people he loves because he sees injustice happening in front of him and cannot allow it to happen. His autonomous decision to do this marks the development of something that has come from within himself and which resonates with Kolvenbach’s assertion that it is unacceptable to act in “self-interest with out reference to anyone ‘other’ than [himself].”

Jane Smiley’s discussion of what racism is forces me to think about what my definition of racism is. As the product of a biracial marriage, I have had my fair share of ignorant comments, and racial identity is always of particular interest to me. As I said in my last post, my favorite part of the novel is when Jim says that even without the money, he’s already rich, because he owns himself. I suppose I believe that everyone should be able to own himself, and that others should not be allowed to interfere with that. I personally feel that attributing anyone’s behavior with their race—and it has happened to me in the past, and it will happen to me in the future, and there were examples just in this past week in the pop culture world where it has happened—is racist. I would wholeheartedly agree with Smiley’s claim that there was and unfortunately is “reasoning that white people use to convince themselves that they are not ‘racist’, “ but I think this is something that everyone does. While Huck never has this inner discussion using this exact language, he does reason through some of his racist thoughts, and so does my grandfather, who was born in Peru. I think that progress truly can come from schools and the kind of teaching that Kolvenbach discusses, and I think that Morrison’s claim that the novel is the argument is the reason why it is taught in schools and the reason why it is often banned. I identify with her discomfort at the language in the novel, but it is that very discomfort which forces every student to come to terms with her own perspective on the subject.

You Gotta Have Faith

Over the past school year I have had the privilege to work for a very special young girl. When I began babysitting for her a year ago this September, she was just undergoing a massive change in her life. Rather than begin the upcoming school year at the school she had been attending since pre-first, she would be moving to another school, one that specializes teaching children with dyslexia.
I noticed early on that she had major difficulties while reading. Her frustration was tangible and I felt that as much as she disliked reading she desired to read, and read well. Her desire to read is much like Father Kolvenbach’s claim that “we face a world that has an even greater need for the faith that does justice” (31). The problem facing our world, as well as this young girl is that we do not lack the faculties to flourish and persevere but we lack the faith that bolsters those faculties.
In Jane Smiley’s criticism “Say it ain’t so, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark Twain’s ‘Masterpiece’” she touches on Father Kolvenbach’s notion that we live in a faithless world. Her main disapproval with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is that neither Huck nor Twain “takes Jim’s desire for freedom at all seriously; that is, they do not accord it the respect that a man’s passion deserves” (357). Smiley categorizes this lack of respect as a racial issue. She claims that Huck loves Jim and appreciates his friendship, but that is as far as the relationship can go. Huck leads Jim away from his previous way of life and towards “ignorance” (31). I disagree with her idea that Jim is nothing more than Huck’s “sidekick” (357), but rather that he is his only chance to make a real connection with another human being. Ultimately they can no longer remain friends but that is not to say that they did not previously have a deep and meaningful friendship.
For Toni Morrison in “This Amazing, Troubling Book” what seems to trouble her most is Huck’s melancholy nature. She feels that Huck has no faith in humanity and his only hope to “live without terror, melancholy, and suicidal thoughts” (388) is Jim. Morrison also feels that Huck is given Jim as a black father figure, and she argues that Huck cannot see past race and humbles himself in front of the father but not in front of the black man. Morrison claims that Huck’s relationship to Jim is his only source of faith in humanity and births in him a sense of solidarity with humanity.
After I returned from the summer and began to babysit again I noticed a drastic change in her. She wanted to read and was reading beautifully. She no longer shied away from activities that involved reading and no longer needed me to read for her. I believe her improvements were because of her new school. What struck me as interesting while reading “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in American Jesuit Higher Education” was how Father Kolvenbach’s observations of education and location were similar in Silicon Valley and Baltimore. While I saw the young girl gain faith and flourish in her reading, other children ten minutes away were “condemned to ignorance and poverty” (31).
It is our duty as students of a Jesuit University to do whatever we can in our power to help educate those less fortunate than us. Without doing so we are doomed to live in a faithless world that lacks solidarity between all people. The use of Huckleberry Finn to illustrate this point makes cohesion of these articles ideas difficult, but satisfying. All three of the articles read for today can agree on one idea: do not lose your “Jims.” Morrison states that Huck’s only source of goodness in the world is Jim and without him “there is no more story to tell” (391). As part of a Jesuit society our “story” is Kolvenbach’s service of faith and promotion of justice, which we must respect and help to thrive in today’s age.