Female Deception in Aristophanes Essays -- Aristophanes Women Thesmoph

Female Deception in AristophanesThe sly, unreal nature of women in Ancient Greece is a prominent theme in the comic plays of Aristophanes. the like many other Grecian writers, his depiction of crimes committed by women slanders their reputation and reinforces the negative female stereotypes of the times. Yet when adept looks at the issue through the look of the female characters in his plays, womens dissembling appears to be not only natural, but even praiseworthy for its reliability and aide in leadership, and is relatively immaterial compared to the crimes committed by men. In particular, his two plays Women at the Thesmophoria and Assemblywomen show that female attitudes about deception were varied depending on the crime, and that if a womans deception was for a good cause it was pardoned in the eyes of her fellow matrons.In Women at the Thesmophoria, a Kinsman of Euripides disguises himself as a woman and sneaks into the festival of the Thesmophoria in coordinate to def end the tragic poet, who the women want to kill because he slanders them in his plays. In her speech against him at the festival, Mika complains that he calls them lover-bangers, nymphos, wine-oglers, disloyal, chattery, unwholesome, the bane of mens lives (lines 431-432). On the one hand, these women do not deny the charges Euripides brings against them but seem only to want to continue getting away with them without being caught, ironically giving proof to their deceptive nature. In lines 384-396 the female Herald actually admits that these types of crimes do occur in the household. However, the womens acceptance of them varies. While they defend the practice of baby-swapping, they denounce women who betray lovers, venerable women who steal youn... ...n of deceit in women by no means lessens the restrictions on gender roles and norms in Ancient Greek society, it suggests that womens opinions on deception were oft more than tolerant if the circumstances behind the deceit m ade it excusable. Women seem to view their own deception as innate, useful in certain situations, and unimportant compared to the vulgar, selfish acts of men. The combination of these female attitudes with those of the male characters gives womens deceit both positive as well as negative connotations. Whether a male comics perception of womens attitudes about deceit reflects actual female opinion or not is still to be contested, but even by poking fun at womens ability to rule Aristophanes is giving the Athenian women some voice about their own deceptive characteristics and creates a more well-rounded look at female deception as a whole.