Veering from an Object at the Periphery to a Subject at the Center: Women’s Sexual Power and the Collapse of Masculinity in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Pinter’s The Homecoming
| dc.contributor.author | Eugene Ngezem | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-05-21T13:41:49Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2024-05-21T13:41:49Z | |
| dc.description.abstract | Predicated on the premise that Aristophanes, an iconic classical dramatist, and Harold Pinter, the winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in literature, deal with the abrupt rise of women to power and the disintegration of the firmly rooted patriarchy in their plays, this essay wrestles with dominion dynamics. As the title intimates, the essay grapples with women’s painful, humiliating journey from servitude to the pinnacle of power in Aristophanes’ comic play Lysistrata (411 B C E), and Pinter’s The Homecoming (1965). Hailing from different countries and separated by fifteen centuries, Aristophanes and Pinter use downtrodden women as springboards for the attainment of women power in pre and postwar societies. While sawing their way from the margin to the center, Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Pinter’s Ruth, in Lysistrata and Homecoming respectively, subdue bossy, brutal, overzealous, insolent, and arrogant men in societies that are insidiously hostile to women’s progress and independence. These young ladies extricate themselves from almost always being objects (receivers of action) and assert themselves as subjects (those who effect the action) in societies fenced on all sides by strong walls of patriarchal hegemony, societies in which, to use the words of Andrew Tolson in “The Limits of Masculinity,” “men remain ‘subjects,’ in dominance, of a patriarchal culture” (69). Using sex as bait, Lysistrata and Ruth quickly initiate arduous tasks of harnessing men in their societies as the latter intently strive to have a slice of their love. Aristophanes hinges the acquisition of women power on steadfast, sacrificial and risk-taking Greek women who suppress their sexual urges while arousing and withholding sex from their male counterparts. Notwithstanding Bert States’s accusation that “Pinter is callously producing vile art, art which presents immoral acts irresponsibly” (150), Pinter seems to suggest that although some will perceive Ruth as a whore, sex is indisputably an effective tool for survival and upward mobility in a harsh, thwarting post-war patriarchal society. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12951/1302 | |
| dc.title | Veering from an Object at the Periphery to a Subject at the Center: Women’s Sexual Power and the Collapse of Masculinity in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Pinter’s The Homecoming | |
| dc.type | Journal Article, Academic Journal | |
| dcterms.bibliographicCitation | Alizes, 49-68, (December 2010) |