I. Good Wives (Penelope), Bad Wives (Clytemnestra) and Weaving:
1. Penelope and Odysseusí return from Troy to Ithaka (from Mondayís
lecture)
a. Questions:
i. How does Penelope
compare to the other women in the Odyssey?
ii. What basic ëtypesí
do these women represent?
iii. Are they necessary
to the story as a whole?
2. The Return (NOSTOS) and Murder of Agamemnon:
a. Source: Aeschylusí trilogy, the Oresteia,
esp. the first play, the Agamemnon (performed in 458 BCE)
b. Names: Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia (Orestes),
Aigisthus, Cassandra, the Furies
c. Places: Argos, Troy, Athens
d. Themes: Female power, Male Effeminacy,
Barbarism, Democratic Ideology
e. Stuff: Purple-Red clothing fabrics, a metaphor
for: blood, economic waste
3. Story:
a. Agamemnon returns from Troy, but in his absence:
b. Clytemnestra has taken a lover (Agamemnonís cousin,
Aegisthus) and has taken control of the throne of Argos! Watch out!
Sheís angry!
c. The people of Argos have grown really angry at
the fact that so many young men of Argos were killed in the Trojan Waróa
war fought ëover another manís
wife!í [is this the
birth of democratic thought?]
d. Clytemnestra convinces Agamemnon to re-enter
his palace by walking on expensive purple-red fabricsóthis is a foreign,
or ëbarbaricí custom, not a Greek
one: is Clytemnestra
trying to turn Agamemnon into a foreigner in his own house?
e. Agamemnon finally agrees; Clytemnestra then enters
the palace herself and kills him by tangling him in these very fabrics
and then stabbing him. Ouch!
f. Orestes returns, kills Clytemnestra (in revenge
for his fatherís death) and then is pursued by the Furies to Athens.
g. First murder trial in court (AETIOLOGICAL MYTH):
establishment of the Athenian democracyódemocracy as the ëcureí for aristocratic
excess.
4. Weaving as Womenís Work:
a. Arachne, Athena, Competition between mortal and
a god
b. Weaving as a metaphor for political order in
Aristophanesí Lysistrata
c. Why Women and Weaving? What economic meanings
lie behind these myths?