Thoughts on a Book
Right around the time when we had to choose a book, I had a discussion with a friend about the history of women. Obviously in modern times sexual discrimination is frowned upon in most societies, but in history there are plenty of cases where women have much fewer rights than men. Due to not knowing too many specifics on the lives of women beyond lessons taught in school, we felt that this project gave a good opportunity for some out of school research. I decided to choose Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity by Sarah B. Pomeroy for this reason.
In this book, Sarah Pomeroy, provides the history of both ancient women and women found in Greek and Roman literature, myths, and art. The book’s setting spans from Bronze Age Greece to the late stages of the Roman empire. While the book is on the shorter side of the list with only more than two hundred pages, the information is limited to women in Europe, and the time frame is less than two thousand years, this book is said to be “‘the first and only scholarly book on its subject in the English language’” (ix). This book presents a clear account of the history of women during the classical era.
A unique way in which she presents her research on the history of women is through religion. An example of this is, “The Artemis of classical Greece probably evolved from the concept of a primitive mother goddess” (29) and how “failure to marry, however, was misinterpreted as virginity by succeeding generations of men who connected loss of virginity only with conventional marriage” (29). I have never thought deeply on how religion can be used to interpret society’s thoughts on a role in society. I have never considered why Artemis and Athena were virgin goddesses and Pomeroy has successfully made me give deeper thought on the reason for why certain myth stories exist.
Another unique way in which she presents her research on the history of women is through literature. “Thus through the ages, the traditional elements of the epics have not only been preserved, but have also taken on the values, mores, and biases of each generation of poets” (134). As the songs sung by bards and stories told through word of mouth are oral in nature, changes can be done to what is passed down. I do not know to what extent the traditional elements of these stories and songs can be preserved after going through generation after generations.
As always, learning about what roles women were forced to occupy in history feels very unfair to me. In Greek, “The principal duty of citizen women toward the polis was the production of legitimate heirs to the oikoi, or families, whose aggregate comprised the citizenry” (69). As mentioned by this book, since primary sources related to women beyond stereotypical interpretations of them were nearly nonexistent, this really seems like the only thing they have done to contribute over the course of history. Modern teachings have provided me with a much more open view on how I should see women. Not only this, but America is the country which places heavy emphasis on freedom and rights to the individual. I truly cannot see how men of those times could not see the potential that existed within some of those women, and treated them as little as breeders, and at most as a caretaker.
It’s obvious that since we were not around thousands of years ago, we are forced to accept primary sources written or made by the people of that time and interpret them ourselves. While knowing this fact, Pomeroy brought to my attention that fact that as societies back then were patriarchal in nature, with many parts of history written by men, it is not always clear on how exactly women led their lives. Because of this Pomeroy spends a significant amount of time also to explain male attitudes on women, both past and present. I found it surprising that Pomeroy was able to sustain a mostly unprejudiced tone for the duration of the book as my first thought was that this book would focus more on the injustices suffered by women during the classical era.
I felt these were my most important takeaways from the novel Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves. The book gave a not long yet not short scholarly view of women in the classical era. As there used to not be many books on the history of women in Ancient Greek and Rome, this book can be considered to be one of the firsts of its kind. Through this I learned how pitiful the amount of information we have on women during this time period. By reading this book, I can clearly see how insignificant women appeared to be in history and how little of their contributions have been recorded by male scholars and historians. After this book I hope to be able continue the discussion I had with my friend and see what new insights she has gained through her readings.