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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
If there are examples of gender dynamics, or
different gender roles than we have seen in the
past, the question presented to us, becomes is
there any way to tell what might have made these
events occur. Or does the shift in gender roles
just occur over a given period of time?
Bibliography lists 6 sources.
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6 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_BBgendyn.doc
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lists 6 sources. BBgendyn.doc GENDER DYNAMICS in AESCHYLUS ORESTEIA Written by B. Bryan Babcock for the Paperstore, Inc., March 2001 Introduction Sherman (1997) relates that according
to Nicole Loraux, in her book, Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the Division between the Sexes, the Athenian woman "did not exist" for there was no place
provided for her in the political system. We do not read of "citizen-ess." Rather the protector of the City, Athena is "a goddess without a mother, who refuses
marriage and maternity for herself but presides over the vitality of those institutions in the city (10). It was the "Warrior Goddess job" to protect the city, which allowed
men to "be out and about." If this thought by Loraux is anywhere near accurate a definite gender dynamic is put into place with the beginning of the city itself.
Notice also the subtle slanting of gender perceptions within the play, as, the male eagle Agamemnon is depicted as providing "prey" (the spoils of war from Troy) to fledgling chicks,
an activity normally associated with females (lines 246-250). Clytemnestras dominance Homer pictured Clytemnestra as a weak woman who gave in to a suitors advances. Yet from history
and Aeschylus, we have a much stronger sense of this woman. She was the daughter of a king that Agamemnon had visited in earlier travels. So enchanted was she
to this new person in her fathers court; that she made advances to him, and in fact left with the ship when he sailed. These were hardly, the actions
of a weak person. She is away when Agamemnon sails for Troy, so she does not immediately know that he has sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia in order to have good
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