Female Acts in Greek Tragedy

Although Classical Athenian ideology did not permit women to exercise legal, economic or social autonomy, the tragedies often represent them as influential social and moral forces. This work studies this apparent contradiction, showing how Greek tragedy uses gender relations to explore issues.

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Although Classical Athenian ideology did not permit women to exercise legal, economic, and social autonomy, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides often represent them as influential social and moral forces in their own right. Scholars have struggled to explain this seeming contradiction. Helene Foley shows how Greek tragedy uses gender relations to explore specific issues in the development of the social, political, and intellectual life in the polis. She investigates three central and problematic areas in which tragic heroines act independently of men: death ritual and lamentation, marriage, and the making of significant ethical choices. Her anthropological approach, together with her literary analysis, allows for a rich context in which to understand gender relations in ancient Greece. This book examines, for example, the tragic response to legislation regulating family life that may have begun as early as the sixth century. It also draws upon contemporary studies of virtue ethics and upon feminist reconsiderations of the Western ethical tradition.
Foley maintains that by viewing public issues through the lens of the family, tragedy asks whether public and private