Thornton Chapter 2: Women
In a now-familiar pattern, Thornton starts out with some "current" events, presumably in order to make a quick case for the relevance of the theme of the current chapter. In this case, his thesis is that women in countries that have inherited the legacies of the Greeks have it much better off than in those countries that have not.
It is worth questioning whether there is any plausible responsibility we can assign to Greek civilization for the progress that the last 100 or so years have brought in women's roles in western societies.
Thornton's chapter admits that by and large, the Greeks had a negative stereotype of women and gave them an inferior societal status. That stereotype was partially due to the Greeks' perception of a closer connection which women have with nature than men. That closer connection included eros in its destructive potential. It was also partially due to the nature of life in Greek society, where physical strength was perhaps more directly connected to one's ability to do the work required for a well-supplied life.Given that physical strength was more important, it followed that males, who on average are physically stronger and not subject to pregnancy and menstruation, had the public power. That link is questionable, but not utterly implausible or improbable.
But Thornton counters the negative stereotype and inferior societal status in a two-step process. First, he suggests that whatever the reality was in Greece, that reality is not of concern when we are looking at the legacy of the Greeks. The reasoning is that it was the perception of Greek women and Greek attitudes towards women that determined their legacy, for how could a renaissance humanist in Italy in the 16th century have any real clue about the reality of Greece? He or she would only have the literary sources. Thus Thornton's second step is to examine that literary legacy. There he finds many powerful positive female prototypes, such as Lysistrata, Penelope, and Alcestis, and powerful if not entirely positive prototypes such as Medea. Those prototypes show us the other side of the coin: women were in fact very valued and valuable members of Greek society who played important, sometimes the most important, roles in households. And households included much more than what we might think of, for Greek "households" included slaves, servants, and many aspects of the production (n.b. not "shopping for," but production) of essentials such as clothing, health products, and food.
Thornton further argues that the broader picture of what the Greek legacy has given us includes such things as modern science, which has liberated women from the tyranny of many health problems and has provided birth control as well as a drastic reduction in the drudgery of household tasks. It also includes the Enlightenment ideals of human rights, which have been important in the movements of feminism which have led to great strides in societal attitudes towards many of its members, including women.
While Thornton is right that at the root of such developments lies Greek civilization, the long chain of carriers of "Greek" civilization have had their own very important independent contributions to make, and so the "Greeks" are at best indirectly responsible for such developments. In terms of their "legacy," no one should think the Greeks were scientific or industrial in the modern sense. They were early forerunners of modern science and industry. In the case of industry, one might argue that the Greeks had little contribution to make, for their "industries" were not dissimilar to those of societies of their time.
On the other hand, Thornton's points are well taken about some modern intellectual claims that the Greeks were instrumental in the creation of all the evils of a technological society and they were nothing but patriarchal, misogynistic, "phallocratic," and sexist. Most other societies of their time were patriarchal, misogynistic and sexist. So how can we blame the Greeks for that without blaming all the others? If we are to speak of the real conditions of Greek women, it is unfair to judge the Greeks by our standards: compare them to other societies of their time, and they are better than most. And it is true that there is a contintuity to the intellectual tradition of the west that reaches back to the Greeks AND STOPS THERE. That intellectual tradition is what has given us technology, science, human rights, etc.
In terms of more specific claims about women, on pages 38-39 Thornton gives a thumbnail sketch of how many scholars view the Greek attitude towards women. That view is a dark one: they were creatures of eros, needed to be controlled, particularly in matters of reproduction, and were confined to harem-like conditions. Thornton suggests that that view needs revision and completion. Namely, the portrayal of harem-like conditions that kept women under extreme control does not fit with the fact that apparently adultery was not uncommon, and it does not square with the archaeological remains of Greek houses, which do not show a configuration that would allow for segregation and quasi-imprisonment of women. Men too were subject to eros and irrationality.
On pages 40-46, Thornton speaks to the notion that women are more subject to eros and that they are inferior to men in terms of rationality. It is indisputably true that Greeks, for the most part, thought of women that way, including men of such apparent intelligence and ability to see beyond the narrow confines of their society as Plato and Aristotle. For that both Plato and Aristotle are to be chastised: "philosophy" is all about rising above narrow confines and seeing underlying matters. They did not do so (although they did so in many many other areas). ON THE OTHER HAND, there is a clear and common portrayal of Greek men as subject to eros and failure of rationality. Thus the Greeks thought women were more subject to eros and less able to control it, but it was a matter of degree. Many of the most prominent men in Greek literature had gross failures of rationality precisely because of eros.
One pages 46-53, Thornton addresses marriage in Greece. His evidence is admittedly limited because all we have are literary remains (elite). Medea's speech in the beginning of Euripides' play apparently criticizes patriarchal marriage and its evils: dowries, painful adjustment of a much younger wife to an older husband, confinement, risk of death in childbirth, etc. Medea herself, however, exercised autonomy: she left her father for love. For most citizen-women in Greece, marriage gave them status and benefits. Greek marriage was not a matter of a personal decision based on love: it was a familial decision based on compatibility. Love came later. Husbands, however, could have courtesans and concubines (prostitutes and mistresses). Sex binds together the marriage as well as the prostitute and mistress- relationships. Love is not excluded. But the marriage combines much more societally important functions both politically and economically. Greeks thought of humans as pairing creatures. The ideal was a harmonious union of two like-minded humans for familial, economic, social, emotional, political, etc. reasons.
On pages 53-59, Thornton describes positive female stereotypes: Penelope, Antigone, Lysistrata. His watchword is "complex humanity," by which he means that many passages in Greek thought portray women as every bit as complex and capable of heroism, rationality, and other positive traits as men were.
Thornton ties up the chapter with a brief mention of the fact that Plato included women among his guardians and gave them the same education as the men. What he does not mention is that he does so purely because he feels that women are wasted resources and should be exploited to support his state. He does not do so for their own good. Furthermore, he states quite clearly that women are generally inferior in every way to men.