Review - Kirk Ormand's Exchange and the Maiden

Homosocial

Before presenting the cases of individual Sophoclean women, Deianeira, Antigone, Jocasta, and Tecmessa, Ormand looks at Greek marriages and the marital conflict presented in the sources. Ormand uses the term "homosocial" to explain the competitive world in which men lived, where women were little more than bargaining chips and fields to be cultivated. In this homosocial world women were so insignificant that a woman's part in adultery could be ignored, since the act of treachery was an almost insignificant part of the ongoing competition between men. Not even marriage was strictly heterosexual; instead it was a contract cementing the relationship between two men. Since, as objects in the exchange, women could be returned, their loyalty was always in doubt.

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