Married with Beasts: Animalization of Women in the Works of Hesiod and Semonides of Amorgos
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This paper examines the animalization of women in Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days as well as the seventh fragment of Semonides of Amorgos. Hesiod makes it clear that women were different from men in his depiction of Pandora’s creation and the ensuing birth of the race of women. Pandora’s dog-like, deceptive nature is a tool to dupe Epimetheus into accepting her. After Pandora opened the jar, which released agony and anguish, men had to work all day and night to survive. In this onerous life, women are like drones who always idle in the honeycomb and mooch off the toil of the worker bees. Though Hesiod is not ignorant of the fact that women are necessary to continue the family line, he assesses the efficiency of women only from an economic and utilitarian perspective. In Hesiod’s efforts to find the optimal size of an oikos to reduce the amount of labor done by men, it would have been coherent to minimize female contributions to the house by deliberately avoiding discussing motherhood. The setting of the seventh fragment of Semonides of Amorgos appears to be at a symposium where husbands gather and assess the negative characteristics of their wives. Semonides does not equate women with animals explicitly, but women are still differentiated from men as bestial. Zeus molded the minds of women from eight animals (sow, vixen, bitch, donkey, weasel, mare, monkey, and bee), earth, and water. Following the characteristics of the animals and other elements that formed them, women are divided by type into filthy, gluttonous, raving, deceptive, nosy, lazy, thieving, obscene, and luxurious. Only the virtuous bee wife is desirable, but she may also turn out to be disastrous to her husband eventually. Semonides makes men deplorable because no matter how men continue whining about their women, they are completely unaware that they were born fettered to women and will never be freed from that bond. Agreeing on the premise that women are evil to mankind, Hesiod and Semonides differentiate women from men as having animalistic traits or minds, and they both address the dilemma that men still need to cohabit with bestial women. Semonides borrows literary motifs from Hesiod that appear in the seventh fragment. Nonetheless, Hesiod focuses on the etiology of his current society, where an ordinary farmer has to work ceaselessly to support his family, and he assesses women’s value from an economic perspective. In the process, women are dealt with as a monolithic group, deprived of their individuality; women’s contribution to the oikos and the community through reproduction is also obliterated. Semonides subdivides Hesiod’s race of women into ten types, and each woman displays individuality. Semonides acknowledges women’s roles as mothers and locates women in the oikos. The sense of community is bolstered by Semonides, who depicts the small gatherings of neighbors. This increased communal sense may be ascribed to the concepts of oikos and polis that were more established after Hesiod’s times. Later authors in classical Greece continue to employ animalization of women as a literary device to denounce or otherize women. Accordingly, Hesiod and Semonides are the earliest poets who sparked the fear that someday the female others may reveal their inner bestiality to the detriment of men.
Abstract
This paper examines the animalization of women in Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days as well as the seventh fragment of Semonides of Amorgos. Hesiod makes it clear that women were different from men in his depiction of Pandora’s creation and the ensuing birth of the race of women. Pandora’s dog-like, deceptive nature is a tool to dupe Epimetheus into accepting her. After Pandora opened the jar, which released agony and anguish, men had to work all day and night to survive. In this onerous life, women are like drones who always idle in the honeycomb and mooch off the toil of the worker bees. Though Hesiod is not ignorant of the fact that women are necessary to continue the family line, he assesses the efficiency of women only from an economic and utilitarian perspective. In Hesiod’s efforts to find the optimal size of an oikos to reduce the amount of labor done by men, it would have been coherent to minimize female contributions to the house by deliberately avoiding discussing motherhood. The setting of the seventh fragment of Semonides of Amorgos appears to be at a symposium where husbands gather and assess the negative characteristics of their wives. Semonides does not equate women with animals explicitly, but women are still differentiated from men as bestial. Zeus molded the minds of women from eight animals (sow, vixen, bitch, donkey, weasel, mare, monkey, and bee), earth, and water. Following the characteristics of the animals and other elements that formed them, women are divided by type into filthy, gluttonous, raving, deceptive, nosy, lazy, thieving, obscene, and luxurious. Only the virtuous bee wife is desirable, but she may also turn out to be disastrous to her husband eventually. Semonides makes men deplorable because no matter how men continue whining about their women, they are completely unaware that they were born fettered to women and will never be freed from that bond. Agreeing on the premise that women are evil to mankind, Hesiod and Semonides differentiate women from men as having animalistic traits or minds, and they both address the dilemma that men still need to cohabit with bestial women. Semonides borrows literary motifs from Hesiod that appear in the seventh fragment. Nonetheless, Hesiod focuses on the etiology of his current society, where an ordinary farmer has to work ceaselessly to support his family, and he assesses women’s value from an economic perspective. In the process, women are dealt with as a monolithic group, deprived of their individuality; women’s contribution to the oikos and the community through reproduction is also obliterated. Semonides subdivides Hesiod’s race of women into ten types, and each woman displays individuality. Semonides acknowledges women’s roles as mothers and locates women in the oikos. The sense of community is bolstered by Semonides, who depicts the small gatherings of neighbors. This increased communal sense may be ascribed to the concepts of oikos and polis that were more established after Hesiod’s times. Later authors in classical Greece continue to employ animalization of women as a literary device to denounce or otherize women. Accordingly, Hesiod and Semonides are the earliest poets who sparked the fear that someday the female others may reveal their inner bestiality to the detriment of men.
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