Characteristics of female figures in love stories in ancient Greek mythology

Ancient Greek mythology is an artistic illustration of the real life of ancient Greek society. Most of the women portrayed in it lived under the suppression of male hegemony, carried the yoke of "male civilization", and played the social roles set by men and fulfilled the "sacred" mission given by men. Their bitter fate reflects the evolution of women from "goddess" to "woman" to "slave girl", and outlines the inverted pyramid of women's status. The "pyramid" of women's status is a reflection of the true mirror image of the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy in the ancient Greek society.

1. The loss of matriarchy

Female is a mysterious gender. In the myths and religious legends of various peoples, she is both a symbol of beauty, love, and abundance; and a synonym for temptation, sin, and degradation. She is sometimes deified and sometimes demonized. Poets eulogize her and curse her.

She once stood on a high mountaintop, wearing a pristine crown, but unfortunately fell down into a deep valley below, her stately tresses disheveled, her bright eyes bewildered, and a male scepter pressed on her noble head.

She had once been the mother of mankind, she had woven the garlands of man, and at one time she could not step into the halls of man, and in the bleak, cold palace she could only keep company with the lonely moon.

She was once the star of human enlightenment, her song ushered in the dawn of human civilization, while the sun of human civilization forgot her for a long time.

Most of the peoples of the world with a long history have undergone a kind of gender power shift from matriarchy to patriarchy. "The Greeks, as they appeared on the stage of history, were already standing on the threshold of the age of civilization; ...... matriarchy had given way to patriarchy. [1] "Literature is a sincere response to the real life of mankind, and the myths of ancient Greece, which were born in the early days of human civilization, responded comprehensively and truthfully to the real thoughts of ancient Greece in this period.

In ancient Greek mythology, the process of establishing the divine system from Uranus and Cronus to Zeus is the transition of ancient Greek society from a matriarchal to a patriarchal society.

From the point of view of marital relations, the divine system of Uranus and Cronus is a typical matriarchal society. Caiya, the earth mother, was both the mother of Uranus and his wife, and she had absolute authority in the family organization. When Uranus hated his children, Caiya encouraged them to rise up against their father. His son, Kronos, established a second divine lineage through an alliance with his mother. The replacement of Uranus by Cronus was not a transmission of power from father to son in the usual sense, but marked the complete triumph of matriarchy in the struggle between the sexes. However, in the course of the conflict between the sexes, as a son, he helped his mother to triumph over his father; but as a male, he realized at the same time his own power and the important role he had to play in this struggle. Thus, as soon as the male, as the son, realizes that the father-son bloodline has the same attributes as the mother-son bloodline, the mother-son alliance in the struggle between the sexes breaks down, and the position of the female is already in jeopardy. The subsequent emergence of private ownership further subverted the position of women. The mother-child bloodline was relegated to a secondary position, and women lost their dominance over their children, and the mother-child alliance was inevitably undermined as women's status in the gender struggle declined. Ancient Greek women not only in the social status of the total loss of dominance, in the family life is not due to the protection of the rights of the wife, "was degraded, was enslaved, into the husband's lust of slavery, into the birth of a child of a simple tool". As Engels said, "The overthrow of matriarchy is a defeat of world historical significance for women." The establishment of patriarchal society in ancient Greece was thus realized through a fierce struggle between the sexes and ultimately the complete defeat of women.

In ancient Greek mythology, the patriarchal ruling order was represented by the Olympian gods led by Zeus. Zeus, the supreme ruler, had unlimited power over the earth, the sky, and was in control of the destiny of natural creatures and human beings. This idea of divine dominance embodied the power and majesty of patriarchy. [2] The hand of destiny has a stranglehold on the throat of the goddess. From then on, women lost the Eden of freedom.

2. Women under the pressure of love

Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, quoted in the Dialogues on Literature and Art:

Anciently, there was a kind of yin and yang people who had excessive physical strength, and Zeus, fearing that they would rebel against the gods, cut them in half. Both halves of the split were in agony, and each half eagerly pounced on the other, desperately embracing together, longing to be one again. [3]

In the view of the ancient Greeks, the individual life longs for love, longs for the fit, which is a kind of rooted in the deepest human heart of the strongest and most primitive impulse. This is the strongest and most primitive impulse rooted in the human heart. As a result, love is accompanied by a life-and-death struggle.

2.1 The Betrayal of Zeus

It has been said that women are the green swamp where the morning mist lingers. This metaphor visualizes the dangerous attraction of women in the minds of men.

The "phoenix" love story continues to be played out, but not in a tender way, as men love to watch the domineering, overbearing, dangerous poppies forced to show only their beauty in front of them, blooming meekly like the Yu Beauty, while their venom is forced to flow to their own kind or to corrode themselves.

In a time when the world was conquered by the sword, men held everything, including women.

Monogamy under Zeus was a beautiful front. Women bought into it, and men took to it like fish to water. Zeus himself was a faithful betrayer. As Marx said, "In an age in which any progress is at the same time a relative regression, the happiness and development of some are realized through the misery and repression of others." "The so-called monogamy is in fact only for women, and men are perfectly free to break conjugal fidelity and dissolve marriages at will." [4] In this contest, women are always the weaker party.

Some people say that Hera is the goddess of jealousy, and all the women of Zeus can hardly escape Hera's revenge. Because of Hera's jealousy, Apollo and Artemis's mother Leto nowhere to stay, can only drift under the hell wandering; because of Hera's jealousy, Hercules's mother Alcmene had to endure the pain of abandoning the child; because of Hera's jealousy, Pilates Qi's Princess I'e was turned into a heifer, tortured; because of Hera's jealousy, Princess of Thebes, Semolet was tempted to die under the thunder and lightning of Zeus; Because of Hera's jealousy, Egina's kingdom suffered a terrible plague; because of the fear of Hera's jealousy, Zeus turned into a bull to dominate the Phoenician princess Europa and then went away, making the mournful girl fall into despair. ......

Hera, the mother of the gods, the protector of women, but because of jealousy, so personally killed and maimed her own compatriots.

Hera was the supreme heavenly goddess. In the world of women, there is no doubt that she is supreme, and she can protect herself by all means; however, in front of Zeus, she is also just a humble wife, and the harm she suffers is unmatched, simply because she is the wife of the goddess of the sky, and is in the pocket of a playboy.

Her husband's infidelity brought her great harm, emotionally she could not accept but had to accept, she suppressed great anger. But she is not a rebellious woman, and the arrogance based on her status does not allow her to be silent. However, in those times when men dominated everything, she had no way to take revenge on her husband and could not afford to do so. Therefore, the revolt against her husband's infidelity manifested itself by destroying the women whom he had dyed. They innocently became Zeus' playthings and then his scapegoats. Zeus's forcible possession of them is a kind of physical and mental mutilation. But instead of getting the sympathy and help of the mother of the gods, they had to endure more bullying from their patron god. However, under the rule of a strong male culture, even the strongest woman can only sink deeper and deeper into this quagmire, so what else can those weak and powerless women do except to listen to God's will and endure the humiliation? The saddest thing is that, for Zeus, they are only attracted, appearance, lust attraction, not love. One might even say that what Zeus did to them was not favor, but rape, man's violence against woman, society's rape of the weak, because that behavior was supported and reinforced by the patriarchal values that dominated the culture. Would an all-powerful God fail to protect the woman he loves? That's just a joke.

2.2 Medea's Hatred

The upper beams are not as strong as the lower ones. Under Zeus, whether it is the gods, or heroes, or the most ordinary people, as long as it is a man, has the "right" to polygamy. Otherwise, why Medea's venom? What about the fierceness of Procne? What is the daughter kingdom of Lemnos? ......

In fact, in ancient Greece, husbands abandoned their wives is very common, as the song team said: "Even if your husband fell in love with a new person - this is just a very common thing [5]". ". No wonder Medea has this lament, "Of all sensible, spiritual creatures, we women are considered the most unfortunate. First of all, we have to buy a husband for a heavy sum of money, and he becomes your master instead. [6]"

Medea, a priestess of the goddess Hell, was a famous sorcerer in ancient Greek mythology, possessing skills and wisdom far superior to those of Iasone. However, as a woman - even a woman of superior intelligence - all she can do is to use her magical powers to find the ideal marriage. For this dream of happiness, she has given too much, therefore, her heart is full of uneasiness - "If you leave me,......, my vengeful spirit is going to stir you up to leave your homeland, just as I left my own! fatherland! [7] "When husbands blaspheme love without surprise, they are as fierce as Medea and Procne, whose rebelliousness in punishing their husbands by killing their own children is thrilling. But without the shelter of a family or a husband, there is no place for women to live, and it is the cruelty of society that makes their rebellion against a society that tramples women a matter of life and death.

Sadly, what we can see in the male discourse is only their dehumanization, cruelty and distortion. Male society defines the standard of ideal love and ideal womanhood, and if that standard comes into conflict with the individual, it is the individual that the culture wants to sacrifice in order to maintain authority and dominance [8]. The oppressive social system will crack down on all deviant and rebellious behavior, so as long as the patriarchal ideology exists, relegated and insane women will exist, who have been defined as wicked witches. Aphrodite makes love bloom with bloodied roses. But does it have to hurt just because it has thorns? And even if it does, why is it always the woman who gets hurt? Maybe it's just because, in the male edifice, women are parasites.

2.3 The Martyr's Wife

The tragedy of love continues to unfold. The word "husband" has been used to strangle many women.

Halcyon, who was waiting for her husband to return from a long voyage, wanted to jump into the sea to look for her husband's ghost after learning that he had been buried at the bottom of the sea. Being y touched by the gods, she became a happy pair of kingfishers on the sea with her reborn husband.

Admertus, King of the Freys, was nearing the end of his days, but as long as someone was willing to take his place in the underworld, he could be spared the pain of hell, and the young Queen Alcotis gave her own life to redeem her dying husband.

Perleas killed his father, Esson, while Iason was searching for the Golden Fleece. Unable to overcome her grief, Esson's wife killed herself.

Hercules' wife, Deianira, who had unintentionally killed her husband by mistake by listening to slanderous rumors, drew her sword and killed herself in despair to atone for her crime.

During a ceremony honoring the fallen heroes of the siege of Thebes, Ouatna, the wife of Capaneus, leapt into the fire and burned to ashes with her husband.

The first hero to die in the Trojan War was Palotesilaos, whose fiancée, Laodamia, pleaded with the gods to allow her fiancé to meet her in the sun. When her wish was granted, she cut her own throat and died with her fiancé.

Paris abandons his wife Oenone for the beautiful Helen. Oenone, however, is remorseful after refusing to save her seriously injured ex-husband, and eventually becomes a sacrifice to the flames along with his remains.

......

There are too many other stories that sing like a song. Fidelio once said, "Only people who love each other are willing to sacrifice their lives for each other. [9]" Love, it seems, is the standard answer to explain all this behavior. We do not deny that the wife and husband in the story were y in love. But if it was the wife who died first, I wonder if this drama of life and death would have gone the other way around.

And listen to Hegel's aphorism: "Love is most beautiful in a woman, because a woman concentrates all her spiritual and practical life in love and promotes it as love, and it is only in love that she can find support for her life, and if she meets with misfortunes in love, she will be extinguished like a flame by a gust of wind. [10] "Even the deep reflections of the great philosophers have come to such a conclusion, so does the woman who has lost her love, the wife who has lost her husband, have any reason for the fire of her life to continue to burn?

Love is the whole of life - in fact, this is the only right and "sacred" mission given to women by men, except for procreation, and it is a beautiful lie that men monopolize the whole of women's lives.

The Bible's book of "Genesis" relays God's words to all women in order to punish Eve: "You shall adore your husband, and he shall rule over you." In this clear statement, the woman loses her equality in marriage and becomes her husband's slave girl. Ancient Greek mythology has always been characterized by this idea of the wife as the slave of the husband in the construction of married life. This is not only in the day-to-day relationship between husband and wife, the wife must be subordinate to her husband, but also, tragically, too many women are willing to be martyred for the sake of their husbands. Women, whether they live or die, cannot live for themselves.

In a male-dominated world, women are not born to be themselves. Before they married, they were the property of their fathers; after they married, they became the property of their husbands. Even today, in both the East and the West, this inequality is still reflected in the most everyday titles: unmarried women are called "Miss" and referred to by their father's name, while married women are referred to as "Mrs." and bear their husband's name. At all times, women belonged only to men. They were trapped in a very small space. As a man's wife, she is not allowed to go beyond the confines of her husband's family. What else can she hold on to, even if she is intelligent, when her husband controls everything within her sight and gives her only imaginative material, namely, her love for him and her family duties? The husband controls the wife's axis of thought, so that she can only revolve around him, and the meaning of her life is only limited to this. Once the husband dies, the wife's existence ends there. Life and death together, this is a man specifically for women to set the love mode; for the husband to be buried, is a man designed to monopolize the woman's most they like to see a happy ending. But for women, it is a tragedy.

A woman can die for a man because that man is the whole of her life. But, it is not the woman's own choice.

In those times, it was difficult for a woman to escape the domination of a man, either physically or mentally.

The theory of "female color"

The scourge of the red face

Life is difficult, and there are endless disasters and evils in life. Do you want to know where the scourge of the earth comes from? Well, you can go to the wonderful myths of ancient Greece to find a beautiful maiden whose name was Pandora. The gods created her and sent her to earth. She opened the mysterious box in her hand and offered the gift of Zeus, and all evil poured out, and the carefree earth was suddenly filled with filth.

Since then, people have associated women with scourge. See the wonderful summary of the Indian philosopher: "The root of dishonor is women, the root of discord is women, and the root of bad customs so as to exist is women. [15]"

"Women's scourge theory" is a very peculiar theory, it is not systematic, but very rich; it is not scientific, but it is the explanation of all the evils in the world, all the ominous signs of the "encyclopedia! " - isn't it?

It was Helen who caused the war of her two brothers against Aphrodite and the ten-year-long Battle of Troy; it was the beautiful Princess Antiope of Thebes who caused the fierce battles between the two countries of her father and her husband; it was the youthful beauty of Princess Iole of Icaria who plunged her native country into the misery of enslavement; it was the beautiful wife of Theseus, Hippolyta, who caused the revenge of the women of the Amazon on the city of Athens; it was the beautiful wife of Perez, who was the first woman to be killed in the war against the city of Athens. Athens; it was Hippodamia, the fair bride of Perithoios, who caused the strife between the Lapithae and the Khentauros; it was the lovely Princess Brithaeus of Lyrnaeus, who turned Achilles and Agamemnon against each other; and it was the marriage of the Princess Lavinia of Latium, who caused the duel between Aeneas and Tumnus. ......

"A beautiful woman is the cause of a war, and a beautiful woman is the cause of a blatant theft. [16]" - so says Doromieux.

"The thing that screams horror in women is that women are a scourge. We can neither live with them **** nor without them. [17]" - So said Byron.

"Women are a scourge" seems to have become a stereotype, people always coincidentally curse "women's color", and all think that building a career is a man's work, but the destruction of the country is all because of women. In the Bible, "Jesus Silas" said: "Sin comes from a woman, and because of her, we must all die. [In fact, the reason why "the scourge of female sex" is a scourge is that it can open the cage of the devil in the heart of men. In other words, men are already haunted by evil thoughts. They both covet the beauty of women, but also timid panic; can not hold, but also to find excuses for themselves; in the end, the wrong thing, but also do not have the courage to take responsibility. Thus, the woman's beauty for the man's greed, infidelity, lust and cowardice to bear all the blame.

Men have been vocal in proclaiming that women are to blame. How could they forget that the "evil" women were either snatched by their own hands or tricked by their own mouths, and that a lot of work had gone into them?

They were fought over like objects. They were never consulted, and they never had a choice, or even the right to speak. Men fight over them because they are their property, their toys, I can stop playing with them, I can give them away, I can trade them, I can throw them away, but no one else can just take them. For them, they belong more to the possession of things than to emotional investment. As Beauvoir said, in a patriarchal society, women become owned by men. By comparing women's bodies to flowers, fruits, and birds, poets in the East and the West have actually treated women as beauties to be conquered and possessed as in the case of the marvelous nature. [19] After all, beauty is supposed to have only the value of being seen.

Female "Fate"

In Greek mythology, fate was expressed as the will of the gods. It was named Nemesis (also known as Adelphia, meaning "no one can escape her")[27] and often appeared in the form of oracles, prophecies, dreams, visions, or natural phenomena, to measure the good and evil of people, and to dominate their misfortunes and misfortunes. Therefore, fate can not be said to be a kind of "divine will".

"An oracle told us that if we wanted the country to be saved, we had to throw me, the queen's daughter, into the sea to feed the fishes. [28]"--So Andromeda was bound, with her hands behind her back, to a mountain rock in the midst of the sea.

"The oracle tells us clearly: 'You must not slaughter calves and bulls, but you should sacrifice a young woman from a noble family. Only then can you, including the city, hope for victory or salvation.' [29]" - and so Makari gave her young life.

"Flee your husband, Atalanta, but you cannot escape your husband.' [30]"--A prophecy of old was fulfilled, and Atalanta, who hated men, eventually became the wife of Hippomenes.

"Jupiter (Zeus) wanted Tumnus' sister to leave the battlefield. He sent one of the three goddesses of fate from space to the lower world. The goddess quickly changed into a small lordly bird, which was an ominous bird. ...... Juturna was even pulling her hair and beating her breast, for she had felt the great divine power of Jupiter. In despair she threw herself into the rapids of the Tiber beside her. [31]"

In the dream, "the strange woman, however, seized Europa by the arm as if she were a robber, and drew her forward, without allowing Europa to offer the slightest resistance. 'Come with me, my dear,' the strange woman said to her, 'and I will carry you to Zeus! This is the great event of your destiny!' [32]"--and thus the Princess Europa became irresistibly the woman of Zeus.

"For an oracle had indicated to the father that he would die when his daughter found a husband.' [33]"--So Hippodamia, daughter of Oenomanos, lost her father at the same time as she gained a husband.

"'You will,' says the oracle, 'kill your natural father, marry your natural mother, and leave contemptible offspring to the people.' 'This is the command of Zeus, of the tribe of Kronos.' [34]"-Despite all evasion, Oedipus' mother, Iocasta, could not escape her fate and hung herself from a beam.

What does all this "fate" bring to women? Prometheus once said this sentence: "Whoever learns that destiny is unshakeable power must endure the pain that the Goddess of Fate has sentenced him to. [35]" Yes, there is only pain.

It may seem that all this is the idea of the Goddesses of Fate, who seem to control the woes of all men and the destinies of all living beings. But in reality, they are merely the enforcers of the will of the gods. The gods of Olympus, Moyra in charge of human destiny, she is the daughter of Zeus; Zeus's other three daughters of Palka, but also in charge of human fate and life and death, known as the three goddesses of destiny; and Apollo, the sun god, is the god of light to illuminate the world, his magical rays of light can shine anywhere, and sometimes illuminates the wisdom of people, so that everything becomes visible and real things, including the fate of the untruths! , and he was the son of Zeus. Under this patriarchal control, the voice of the child belongs to the father, so that the real master of life and death is the "god" - the father of the gods, Zeus, and the male will that he represents. --The scales in the hands of Zeus and the two altars of happiness and calamity in front of his door, the reverse of the scales determines the life and death of a man, and those who receive only a little from the altar of calamity 'let him walk over the earth, and everywhere he is attacked by sorrow. ' [36]"

"God" is a "heavenly, all-powerful patriarchy" that is a male creation designed to serve a "male-dominated society" in order to make "male-dominated societies" more effective. Its purpose is to serve "a male-dominated society" in order to make "the mechanisms of oppression of women seem reasonable. In a word, where God is male, male is God. The father figure of God applies only to the formation of personality in a patriarchal society, which figuratively "expresses the pattern of male power and female deference" [37].

When a woman encounters "destiny", she encounters the most absurd lies and the most blatant blackmail in male discourse.

Conclusion

In Chapter 5 of The Second Sex, "Woman in the Early Agrarian Age," Simone says, "That golden age of woman is really nothing but a myth. To say that woman was his was to say that there was no interrelationship between man and woman: the earth, the mother, the goddess - in the man's mind, she was not his kind at all. Her power is recognized as being beyond the scope of man, so she is outside the scope of man. Society is always male, and power is always in the hands of men. Levi-Strauss, in his study of the end of primitive society, declared: 'The public or purely social power has always belonged to men.' [38]"

And women living in the cracks of male power, whether they play the role of wives, mothers, warriors, or are reduced to playthings, sacrifices, and demons, can only endure the humiliation of surviving, being suppressed, and taking on all the crimes and sufferings that their masters, the men, bring to them. all the crimes and sufferings brought on them by their master, the male.

The dilemma faced by women is exactly as Kristeva says, "We cannot create another language system under the dome of the patriarchal culture. [39]"