Women's sexual protest against war in Aristophanes' Lysistrata

Lysistrata

Of Aristophanes' 11 plays that are still extant, Lysistrata is perhaps his most famous. Certainly the play's contemporary popularity stems not a little from the fact that it resonates sympathetically with many of the scholarly concerns that have increased in importance since the rise of the feminist and post-feminist critical movements. The basic dramatic action of the play is quite simple. In response to the ongoing Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta, Lysistrata organizes the women of Athens to protest against the war, which continues to kill their husbands and sons. The manner of the protest is interesting, indeed. It is a sort of boycott -- in this case, the women state that they will not engage in any sexual relations with their husbands until the war is brought to a close. The conceit that begins the play and moves its dramatic action forward seems at first absurd. Indeed, its comedic effects are hysterically funny. Aristophanes, however, is able to use this conceit to make several deeper political points. By comparing the war with Sparta to the rising disagreement between Athenian men and women, he suggests that the war is absurd and threatens the domestic unity of the Hellenistic world. Secondly, in using sex as a sort of synecdoche for unity, he suggests that the infighting in the Hellenistic world promotes disharmony and is as negatively destructive to the natural order of things as the cessation of procreation would be.

Before entering into a formal analysis of the structure and symbolic and figurative underpinnings of Aristophanes Lysistrata, it is worthwhile to consider, however briefly, the historical context that serves as the backdrop for Aristophanes comedic action. The historical developments behind Lysistrata are particularly significant, because -- even though the play does strike several universal chords -- it is at its heart a play motivated by political protests. The action of Lysistrata is perhaps absurd and satirical, but that action is nonetheless a commentary on Athenian imperialism and the warfare resulting from aggressive Athenian diplomacy:

Before long, however, Athens was back on her imperial trail, attempting to subdue Sicily, and Sparta again felt compelled to stop her. The Sicilians defeated and destroyed the Athenian expedition; Sparta on the advice of the brilliant former Athenian general Alcibiades, seized and fortified a base in Athenian home territory; and the crisis resulted which forms the background for Lysistrata.

Sommerstein 13)

So the backdrop for Lysistrata and the other wives' quest for piece is motivated by the immediate serious Spartan threat that Athens was currently facing. It is interesting to note that Athenian imperialism had resulted in the war being brought to the Athenian home front, because in Lysistrata it is also the literal home front -- basic familial life and the security and normality of occurrences around the hearth -- that has been disrupted by the war. Lysistrata makes the war's effect domestic in two fashions; not only is the war a serious and important domestic security issue because the Spartan's have a stronghold within Athenian territory, but it is a domestic issue because the women of Athens find their domestic lives ravaged by a war that kills their husbands and sons.

Indeed, this issue of domesticity is very much at the heart of the matter of what is at stake in Aristophanes play. The absurd comedy within the play exists in the ability of the women to take their influence outside of the traditional domestic role. Indeed, however, the manner in which the women are able to extend their power beyond their typical domestic sphere almost occurs by an enlargement of what that sphere entails. It is almost as if, by taking over the Acropolis, they have made the entirety of Athens into their household:

The really fantastic idea in Lysistrata thus lies not in its portrayal of the women themselves but in its projection of their characteristic roles outside the domestic sphere... In effect, Lysistrata converts the Acropolis into a household for all citizen women. Its exclusivity turns the tables on the men, who have neglected their wives and excluded them from the process of policy-making. And just as a wife might protect the household money from a spendthrift husband, so Lysistrata bars the Magistrate's access to the state treasuries.

Henderson 39)

Thus, what is both the main comedic and dramatic engine within Aristophanes Lysistrata is the fashion in which the women parlay their domestic power into one that has an actual effect on governance. The comedy, too, is derived from the idea that members of government are rebuked by the angry wives in much the same manner that they would rebuke their own husbands. Here, Aristophanes is drawing parallels between the similar contracts involved in both governance and marriage.

Aside from being an extension of the domestic sphere, however, the plot of Lysistrata and the other women also involves a comedic and absurd inversion of the power structure. Aside from that inversion, for the Greeks, anyway, it would also represent an inversion of the typical sexual roles, since women were seen as the more sexually voracious of the two genders:

In this connection it is notable that, while Lysistrata's plot effectively represents not only a political revolt but also a blow against the heart of each Athenian husband's power and status as head of his oikos, this latter aspect of the matter is entirely suppressed in the interests of the concentration on the physically sexual consequences of the strike. Lysistrata caricatures both the stereotypical misogyny of men... And the women's supposed lack of self-control in the face of bodily appetites.

Halliwell 93)

Thus, all of Lysistrata is very much an inversion of the natural order of things, which Aristophanes harnesses for comedic effect, but this reversal of the natural order is of significant thematic importance as well, and Aristophanes seems to intend for us to draw certain conclusions about the unnaturalness of the political situation in relation to the plays subversion of the natural order. This theme of the subversion of the natural order of things ties in nicely with the idea of the sex strike in the play and what the further figurative resonance of the cessation of procreation between men and women means on a deeper level.

Part of the issue of the play is to realize that wives' refusal of sex in particular is emblematic of their deeper refusal to execute the requirements of marriage bond and uphold their union according to the particulars of that unique contract. The cessation of sex doesn't just mean that the women are only withholding sex qua sex; they are also withholding the love, unity, and togetherness of family that implicitly corresponds to this most private act of love:

Love, not merely Sex -- a vital distinction. If Lysistrata is not an exaltation of rut, neither is it a nihilistic satire, which undercuts all human progress, all collective action, by cynically opposing it to the basic animality of the individual. Upsetting as it may seem to us, the heirs of a Puritan ethic, Aristophanes hedonism is rarely anarchic.

Parker 9)

The point that Douglas Parker makes here, which is most relevant is that, although the play is putatively about sex and this topic does drive much of the humor of the play, sex ultimately serves as symbol for a whole series of other phenomena of the utmost importance in the Greek state and in family life. In using sex, Aristophanes is questioning whether or not the aggressive imperialism of the Athenian government considers holistically the effects that such policies will have on its citizens. Sex, while it is of primary literal importance in the drama of the play, stands for many things above and beyond the simple and physical act of sexual congress between men and women. Aristophanes uses it as a sort of metaphorical lever by which he can indirectly examine several related issues.

It is important to remember that the idea of unity as a whole is extremely important in Aristophanes work. The terrible war occurring was all the more terrible because it was Greeks fighting Greeks; this disunity, this disharmony, this discord between brother nations, was, for Aristophanes, deeply depressing and he saw the only solution being an attempt to unify the two warring Greek states under one national banner:

the play as a whole is sad. Now the poet implies, no rational solution of the political seems possible. His sympathetic understanding of the plight of women, whose lives war leaves sunless and empty, is touching and timeless in its relevance. Talk of state policy in the interests of the sexual theme is quite grave and the political message of the whole is on a high level; what Aristophanes advocates, in effect, is Panhellenic harmony to save Greece from destruction.

Hadas 287)

Part of the play's message is an attempt to, in some fashion, secure a more stable interaction between the warring states of Greece and bring about a peace throughout the Hellenic city-states. Indeed, much of the other themes in the play are used to demonstrate the manner in which the Greeks war between each other is unnatural. In this case, the warring elements of the women and the men absurdly pun on the concept of the warring states of Sparta and Greece.

Indeed, Lysistrata, in speaking to the men convened before her and the naked Peace by her side, attempts to argue for a unified Hellenistic world. In this speech, she points out all of the things that the warring parties share in common:

First I must bring a reproach against you that applies equally to both sides. At Olympia, and Thermopylae, and Delphi, and a score of other places too numerous to mention, you celebrate before the same altars ceremonies common to all Hellenes; yet you go cutting each other's throats, and sacking Hellenic cities, when all the while the barbarian yonder is threatening you!

Aristophanes)

This extended metaphor between weaving and the state sews together many of the themes that have been floating around throughout this paper. First of all, the metaphor chosen is one from the domestic work of women, which further reinforces the earlier argument that the women achieve their rise to power by treating Greece as their extended household. In this movement, perhaps Aristophanes wishes us to view Greece as if it were a single household, and asks us to consider the viability of a household at war with itself. Abraham Lincoln's famous quotation about a "house divided" likely suggests itself here. Secondly, it reveals a vision of the state as a primary unity, an organic whole, and a true monism. In this way, the unity involved in sex and in governance are similar, and the decision to violate either of these unities only results in absurdities that usurp the very natural order of things.

Thus, Aristophanes Lysistrata is an intriguing comedy because it utilizes an absurd conceit in order to make a very complex point. What initially grabs us as readers is not these deeper arguments, but the intense and hysterical complicating action the begins the play as Lysistrata and the other women plan a revolt that will save Athens by depriving their husbands of Sex. As the play develops along with the antipathies between the men and women and their opposing camps that we see represented by the choruses of old men and old women, however, we begin to see the ways in which the two warring genders represent the two Greek factions at war. In this manner, Aristophanes is commenting on the absurdity of the Greek states warring with themselves, and suggests that this state is as unnatural as if the two genders were at war with each other. Moreover, Aristophanes uses the idea of sex as an example of unity to comment on the way in which the wars between Athens and Sparta have destroyed Hellenistic unity. His suggestion here is that the destruction of Hellenistic unity is comparable to the cessation of procreation and the usurping of the natural order of fertility.

Aristophanes Lysistrata is an intriguing and unusual play and for many reasons it seems almost timeless. Among the most interesting of its aspects is the fact that its main conceit -- the woman of Athens go on a sexual strike against their husbands in order to protest the ongoing war with Sparta -- is itself an almost modern concept. The women's use of nonviolent methods, in this case a sort of absurd boycott, is reminiscent of the ideas of many political activists of the last two hundred years, and seems to prefigure, although in comic fashion, Thoreau's essay "On Civil Disobedience," Gandhi's nonviolent campaign in India, and the boycotting and nonviolent marches of the early American Civil Rights Movement. Aside from these intriguing political elements, the play continues to be of interest to modern scholarship because of the ways in which it tackles themes and topic that relate to the interaction of different genders. Lysistrata tells us much about the manner in which women and men interacted in Greece and what role women played in daily life. The play, although an absurd and farcical comedy, offers a unique window into the way that women ran their household, as well as teaching us a good deal about the stereotypical interactions between Athenian men and women.

Biography

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