Women in Greek Myth

Modern feminism often takes Greek mythology as reflecting a world in which men dominate women, mainly through tear of their sexuality. Amazons represent original matriarchy suppressed by male conspiracy; Clytemnestra is a neglected wife and frustrated individualist; Antigone a Greenham-Common-style oppressed revolutionary. Mary Lefkowitz, however, in this sensible and stimulating volume, shows that such interpretations hardly match our documentary evidence for the myths. Concentrating on particular aspects of women's experience -- life apart from men, marriage, influence on politics, self-sacrifice, martyrdom, misogyny -- she offers a less negative account of the role of women in Greek literature, concluding that what Greek amen feared in women was not so much their sexuality as their intelligence.