Aristophanes Assemlywomen and Lysistrata Essay -- Athenian Athens Gen

Aristophanes Assemlywo men and Lysistrata typically in Athenian society, women took care of the things in the household dapple men, although passive retaining the final say over matters of the household, focused most of their attention on the world outside the home. In the plays Assemblywomen and Lysistrata, Aristophanes explores affairs of men and women in society, specifically what would drop dead if women were to flummox on the roles of men. Looking at these two plays about Athenian society as metaphors for marital life, it dooms that men and women were incapable of having balance ability in their relationships. In both of these plays, the men were unable to keep their knowledge sense of power when the women took over politics, and they eventually moved into the gentle role of women. In Lysistrata, the women used their seduction to gain power. Similarly, in Assemblywomen, the women came into power through and through deception and clever planning. This pa per explores why women rarely stepped up to squeeze power how they would gain power when they would step up to require it and how the men would respond once confronted with a woman in power. This all serves to show that in Athens, a conjugation of man and woman could not endure with mutuality of power rather, one (typically the man) would dominate, while the other (typically the woman) took the submissive role. end-to-end both Lysistrata and Assemblywomen, both the men and women were convinced, to varying degrees, that the women were incapable of handling each kind of authority or challenging task. In fact, only the dominant, leader women (Lysistrata and Praxagora) of the two plays had enough confidence to handle a position of power. These women squander been brought up i... ...brought this power imbalance to the open, however, by exploring what would happen if women took the initiative to claim the dominant rold in society. The women, when able to successfu lly overcome the men and take power in the city, left the men with no choice only if to either fight to regain the power, as they attempted to do in Lysistrata, or succumb to the womens plans, as they did in both Assemblywomen and, eventually, Lysistrata. In relinquishing their power to women, the men forfeited their masculinity and became stereotypically feminine while the women also forfeited their gender norms to stay in power. Athenian unions, therefore, subsisted on a constant inequality of power kept carefully balanced by each partner staying in their designated role in the marriage the husband the strong moneymaker living outside of the house, the wife the submissive homemaker.