Stealing from the household
(con't.)
Finally, Praxagora, apostrophizing
to the lamp in the opening scene of the Ecclesiazusae,
praises it as a trustworthy helper when women are trying "to
raid the cellars for their store of fruit and bubbles of Bacchus." It is unclear here whether the
purloined goodies are to be enjoyed by the woman herself or shared
but, given the sexual content of the immediately preceding section,
the latter seems more likely. The conjunction here again of stolen
food and illicit sex is striking. The idea that women are indulging
in all possible sensual delights on the sly at one time - something
which the male audience members would have liked to have done
themselves, although they wouldn't have bothered with the secrecy
- functions for the audience both as a kind of wish-fulfillment
through identification and paranoid fantasy.
Just as in the Lysistrata,
this description of theft and craftiness begins to prepare the
audience for the theft of political power that is to come. Also
noteworthy is the fact that the women in the Ecclesiazusae
must steal their husbands' clothes, shoes and staves (the last
item being significant in its role as a phallic symbol) in order
to usurp political control. Unlike the women of the Lysistrata,
who gain power through their sexual identity, the women of the
Ecclesiazusae must steal a masculine identity and carefully
suppress their own in order to get what they want. They even
go so far as to rehearse being men in an assembly;5
a great device for making gender-bending jokes, especially given
that all the actors are men pretending to be women pretending
to be men.
What I hope these few examples
make clear is that the opening quote from Gardner does not lack
for proof. The idea that someone else - be it a wife or her lover
--was getting more than their fair share through theft was a
serious concern. That the cupboard doors are locked within the
locked gynaikonitis (see Eva Keuls discussion of this in The
Reign of the Phallus, p. 108 ff.) beautifully demonstrates
how Athenian men believed that they could not trust outsiders
to stay out or insiders to keep what was inside intact. Given
the background of importing a stranger-wife, this basic mistrustfulness
must have, in some cases, become a nightmare of suspicion for
all involved.
Back |
Next  |
