Exchange and the Maiden
by Kirk Ormand

Publisher:  University of Texas Press
ISBN:  0292760523

To claim citizenship, in the aftermath of the famous Periclean law, an Athenian had to prove both his parents were "astoi." While for the male, being "astos" meant he was an Athenian citizen, it didn't for his wife. Women were never citizens, but only the transmitters of the rights of citizenship to their sons. Such contradictions in the roles and rights of women is the focus of Kirk Ormand's Exchange and the Maiden: Marriage in Sophoclean Tragedy.

Before presenting the cases of individual Sophoclean women, Deianeira, Antigone, Jocasta, and Tecmessa, Ormand looks at Greek marriage and 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.

That women were strangers in their husbands' homes is most tellingly revealed in the Alcestis. Admetus tries to allay Heracles' worry, by assuring him that the person the family is mourning isn't a family member, but a stranger. It is, of course, Admetus' wife, who may be an example of another of Ormand's feminine ambiguities: marriage as a form of death. Marriage meant the end of a secure, familiar life with one's parents, at home, and also the end of childhood. Thus Alcestis may have accepted the physical death as just one more side of her marriage.

The first Sophoclean tragedy Ormand examines is Trachiniae in which Deianeira falsely believes she is at the center of triangles in her marital world. The first triangle she thinks she's involved in is the one with Heracles, and the river god Achelous who intends to marry her. Ormand explains that Deinaeira's tragedy lies in not seeing the true points of that triangle. It's Aphrodite who takes center stage, not Deianeira. The second triangle Deianeira mistakenly thinks she's involved in is the one with Heracles and his new bride, Iole, and Iole's father. The third triangle of Deinaeira's life is the only one in which she is involved, but here she misunderstands her role --fatefully, because it proves the death of her husband. When the centaur Nessus attempted to rape her and then gave her instructions for a love potion, Nessus had no interest in Deianeira, but only in harming Heracles' prestige.

Ultimately, from beyond the grave, Nessus does get the best of the hero. The love potion mortally wounds Heracles, who, in his own words, is forced into the category of a woman by the pain. Homosocially, being a woman is meaningless. So even though dead, Nessus has the upper hand.

Ormand examines the ramifications of being an unmarried woman in his study of Electra and Antigone. Ordinarily inheritance passed to the sons, but in their absence it went to a daughter's husband. This made the women wealthy almost in her own right just as an astos woman was almost a citizen. Ormand shows Sophocles' representation of the epikleros as epitomizing the conflict in loyalties women have between their natal and marital homes.

Tecmessa is the subject of the fourth chapter and the original article this book was written around. Tecmessa is not the legal bride of Ajax, nor is she quite a concubine. She is, however, the mother of Ajax' son, and this is her only value to Ajax. A spear-won bride, Tecmessa continually struggles against this role.

Towards the end of Trachiniae Heracles describes himself as a suffering maiden: "cries out like a parthenos…." and in the Ajax, the hero says he has been "made female." When men in tragedy must endure women's roles, they suffer and lose control. When Oedipus tries to make amends for his crimes, Creon steps in to strip him of control. Instead of exiling Oedipus, he leads him bride-like inside the house.

In the concluding chapter Ormand explains how, ultimately, women remain mysteries in Sophocles' tragedies. Whether they die or stop participating in the dialogue, the women all end up silent:

"because women in fifth century Athens were supposed to be silent, to be kept out of public view, to be removed from a position of subjectivity, they become, in the Athenian imagination, ciphers: unbounded, unresolved, dangerous…. Sophocles' dramas represent women's marriages as a state of perpetual and unfulfilled longing.

N.S. Gill, your Guide for Ancient/Classical History