Divided Consciousness and Female Companionship: Reconstructing Female Subjectivity on Greek Vases

Someone, I say, will remember us in the future.

Sappho ²

In her critique of Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, Amy Richlin makes the following observation (1992.xiv):

Foucault states early on that he sees his history as that of the desiring subject, who is male; women figure in these pages only as objects, and that rarely. . . . Insofar as this is a history of sexuality at all, it is a history of male sexuality, and a partial one at that. . . . I can only say that when I read these books I sense not consciousness but silence, a failure to ask where women’s subjectivity was.

The silence that Richlin describes is real. Efforts to speak about the history of sexuality are informed, or misinformed, principally by ancient and contemporary male-constructed ideology. What is muted or lost both in the ancient record and in twentieth-century discussions is the ancient female’s perception of herself and her sexuality, expressed in her own voice. In fact, we generally construct our ways of seeing ancient women around the notions of the desired and the ideal. The female is an object of male erotic desire, such as a prostitute, hetaira, ³ or slave, or she is an ideal respectable woman, one who marries as a virgin, remains faithful and loyal to her husband, produces an heir for the oikos (household) and polis (city-state), participates in specific religious rites, and is industrious within her home. For different reasons, both types of women can be considered as constructions of the desired in Attic society. Although it may seem probable that the women of antiquity internalized the ideologies of the desired or the ideal imposed on them, I will argue that women could have variously experienced their own subjectivity and sexuality within the constructs of patriarchy. ⁴ Making use of feminist theory as well as ancient literary texts, I will examine depictions of female companionship on Greek vases and explore the connections between female companionship and female subjectivity.

Vases, Women, and Virtue

In Athenian democracy, men participated predominantly in the creation, administration, and defense of the polis. Women, under the authority of the household patriarch, were assigned to manage the oikos, which in turn provided for the polis. ⁵ It is important to remember here as elsewhere that Greek society was segregated by gender. ⁶ Specific types of vases contain idealized images of female toil and can been seen as illustrating the constructs of this social arrangement. These types of vessels, presumably authored by men for women’s use, ⁷ constituted part of the accouterments women needed to fulfill their prescribed rituals and daily activities. In separate arguments, Claude Bérard and Robert Sutton conclude that women therefore became important active consumers of vases and that the images of women on these vases must have spoken to feminine sensibilities (Bérard 1989.89 and Sutton 1992.22–32). Bérard argues that, “although produced by men, the images painted on vases transmit a much more complex vision of female realities” than “the stereotyped image [of women], created by Attic writers to contrast their women with the girls of Sparta. . . .” (1989.89).

Figure 1a.

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1931 (31.11.10). Black-figure lekythos attributed to the Amasis painter, c. 560 B.C.E. (ABV 154.57). Right side: women folding cloth and working wool. Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Figure 1b.

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1931 (31.11.10). Black-figure lekythos attributed to the Amasis painter, c. 560 B.C.E. (ABV 154.57). Front: women weaving. Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Figure 1c.

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1931 (31.11.10). Black-figure lekythos attributed to the Amasis painter, c. 560 B.C.E. (ABV 154.57). Left side: women weighing wool. Photo courtesy of the...