Discovering the Concept of Women’s Otherness in Aristophanes’ Comedies

In investigations about historical literature of ancient Greece, Greek women were typically imagined oppressed and subjugated. Yet, women’s roles and positions in ancient Greek dramas, whether in tragedy or comedy, are unexpected and controversial. Traditionally, scholars understand this paradox simply inspired by the mythological system of thought of that time, but in the late half of the twentieth century, different interpretations of the female characters in dramas were suggested. Among the Greek dramas, I chose three comedies by Aristophanes, the father of Greek comedy. The plays are known as “women’s plays” and they are including Lysistrata, Thesmophoriaszousae, and the Ecclesiazousae. In Lysistrata, instead of gods and goddesses, women are the savior of Greece nation. They resist in front of militant men and bring peace to Greece. In another play, Tsemmophoriasus, women protest against misogyny and atheism existed in Euripides tragedies. They condemn Euripides to death because he insults women in his tragedy and made the situation hard for them. In Ecclesiazousae, women seek utopia by presenting the ideas for a communist society. They make their dream come true by disguised themselves as men and going to parliament. They vote for women ruling and made their utopia for a while. Aristophanes confronts women and men in three different positions in these three plays. In this article, these works were examined, and besides that, two opposing interpretative approaches on these three comedies were presented. I entitled them negative otherness and positive otherness. On the one hand, some scholars believe the otherness of women and the active roles of them in these plays are comical and abusive (negative otherness). In this part, I mostly concentrate on Taaffe interpretation. Meanwhile, other scholars suggested different approaches to women’s otherness in these comedies which are in accordance with feminist standpoint theory. They argue that women in these comedies are not comics at all. Women in these comedies are “the other” who has the epistemic advantage in comparison with men (positive otherness). They applied their own lives experience to make peace and ruled a utopian government, which can be explained by “Feminist Standpoint Theory”. In this part, I use Strauss and Foley analysis. At the end of this article, I conclude that studying Aristophanes’ plays from the late perspective provides a better understanding of the otherness of femininity in his works.