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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A paper which looks at Sue Blundell's "Women in Ancient Greece", an important text which draws on numerous contemporary sources in order to build up a comprehensive picture of the life of women of the period, despite the cultural filters of a strictly patriarchal system.
Page Count:
3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: JL5_JLblunde.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
Greece is that there is very little information available on womens lives; the other problem is, of course, that most of the information which is available is written by men.
Sue Blundell deals effectively with both of these constraints. Whilst avoiding an unbalanced, pro-female perspective on the lives of ancient Greek women, she makes her reader constantly aware that the
picture we have of such women is strongly coloured by the "male gaze". Not only do virtually all of the written sources originate from the masculine view of womens position
in society, but the extent to which women are even mentioned at all is dependent on other socio-cultural factors: we might expect to encounter a description of a respected urban
matron, for instance, but not of the day to day existence of her serving-wench. We tend to approach the study of ancient Greece with
the clear understanding that we are entering a thoroughly masculine world: economic, social and political power is vested in men and women are only depicted inasmuch as they are defined
and perceived through the male perception. Blundells text tries to redress this imbalance, by offering a comprehensive picture of women in Archaic and Classical Greece. Even though women were not
expected to appear in the public sphere, being confined to the household, Blundell notes that they do appear in the artwork and literature of the period, as well as in
legal documents. It is from these sources that she is able to build up a picture of the daily life of women, and their social and economic position in society,
as well as the male perspective on female life. She looks at the portrayal of women in Homer and in lyric poetry and drama, at
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