The attitude of Aristophanes towards women

 

What was the attitude of Aristophanes towards women?-Discuss.

 

Ans. Aristophanes reflected on women and expressed his attitude to them. It was not very favourable. He was a dramatist as well as an objective artist. We cannot always pin down to the utterances of the characters. Many of the remarks are the outcome of dramatic necessity. Euripides had created some female characters. These women characters had all the tenderness of ideal womanhood. The Athenian playwrights had written about the credit of good woman or tenderly delicate female characters. We should cite here the sublime self-sacrifice of Alcestis, who was noble and loving. Phaedra is not a vicious woman but only a helpless victim of an angry goddess. Medea killed her children, still she compels over sympathy and admiration.

 

Strangely enough, Aristophanes while condemning Euripides for misogyny, had become a misogynist. He had unscrupulously  caricatured the Athenian women of all stations of life. The women of Lysistrata cannot be considered to be ideal women. Euripides had to pass through various ordeals, but finally he came out victoriously. The Frogs of Aristophanes became a grand success on stage, He won the first prize at the Dionysia. Dionysus was the patron god of poetry and drama. It is true that Aristophanes laid more emphasis on the male characters, though he parodies them. The female characters of Aristophanes were not of much importance and that explains his attitude to them.