The importance of a male heir has already been stressed. Every man or women was supposed to marry, and the main purpose of marriage was to have legitimate children, especially sons who would carry on the oikos (and the polis). Sexuality was very much thought of in the context of procreation. How men looked at women depended primarily on the female biology: a woman was above all a being that could bear children. Consequently, women were categorized as the young girl who could not yet reproduce, as the nubile virgin, as the sexually active, fertile wife and mother, and as the infertile older woman and mother. Of course, there were women who did not fit into these categories: the unmarried woman who had lost her virginity and the woman who could not bear children (or did not want to: here, we should consider prostitutes who used contraceptives to avoid pregnancy or resorted to abortion). Such women were banished to the margins of society.
So, grown-up women were there to provide heirs; they were mothers of sons (and of daughters who would be the mothers of future sons). But men also saw their marriage partner as an economic partner: a couple was an economic unit. All this implies that a
Marriage was a marriage of convenience. The father of the bride and the father of the groom, or the father of the bride and the groom himself, drew up a contract. The bride, some 14 years of age, moved in with the groom, who was in his twenties. It is obvious that her position was subordinate from the very start. She could gain authority after she produced an heir and successfully shared the management of the oikos, but she would remain subordinate: ancient Greek society was strictly patriarchal. Of course, a marriage of convenience and an asymmetrical power relationship does not rule out love or affection between marriage partners.
A woman’s place was in the home. Women went out only for funerals, marriages, and religious ceremonies and festivals. Their religious duties, in particular, gave them some freedom of movement: there were many religious cults in which women actively participated, or where participation was restricted to women. Men went out to work, to take part in the political life of the polis, to meet friends, and so on. Women lived on the inside, men on the outside, and their spheres were quite separate. At least, this was the Athenian ideal, an ideal that only the wealthier could fully live up to. The poor had no slaves and needed the labor of their female relatives in order to survive. So there were women out in the fields and on the streets, but they were definitely lower class.
Women were kept away from male strangers, in order to protect the virginity ofdaughters and to ensure the fidelity of wives, and thus the legitimacy of one’s children. Also, the behavior of the women in a household was an index of the honor of the householder: if he could not control his womenfolk, his reputation was at stake. There was a double standard at work here: the women had to be chaste and true to their husbands, while the men were unrestricted in their sexual behavior (except that they should not try to seduce the wife of a fellow citizen). They could have mistresses, consort with prostitutes, had their slaves always at their disposal, and could even have legal concubines, who could bear legitimate free children (who, however, could not be citizens). This was considered perfectly normal, except that squandering one’s fortune on sexual pleasures was definitely frowned upon.
Most Greeks were convinced that women were men’s inferior, in all possible aspects, starting with the body. Women were seen as frail creatures, the weaker sex. Pregnancies from a young age with all their attendant complications, diseases, being largely confined indoors and not having too much to eat may very well have assured that women were indeed bodily weak. But they were also supposed to be morally unsound: sexually voracious and thus always likely to betray their husbands. Intellectually, women were considered to be backward too. A self-fulfilling prophecy, if what we have said above about the lack of an education is true. Women were seen as inferiors, and were treated as minors. They remained minors throughout their lives: they never really grew up and were not allowed to act independently. They always needed to have a male guardian, their so-called kurios. A woman moved from the kurieia, the guardianship, of her father to that of her husband, her son, or some other male relative. Freeborn or liberated women who were not Athenians but metics were not bound by such rules and could operate relatively independently. Still, it is unlikely that the wives of Athenian citizens envied such women: undoubtedly they felt proud that only they could give birth to Athenian citizens.
World History
