Analysis of a World Text
What is the main theme of the play?
First performed in 411 B.C., Lysistrata has now achieved “a fairly permanent place in the modern theatre” (Robson 192), although in the past it was often censored for what Harsh calls its “low comedy” (292). The main character’s name – Lysistrata – is one that was given to girls in classical Athens, but, like most names, it has a meaning. It means “Dissolver of Armies” (Tritle 59) or “Disbander of Armies” (Henderson 35), and it seems fitting, therefore, that the prevailing critical consensus is that Lysistrata is about peace: Tritle even dubs it “the peace play” (85). However, such views, while undoubtedly largely accurate, tend to ignore other facets of the play. Lysistrata does present peace as its main theme, but its presentation also involves inter-related themes such as “men and women, sex and gender” (Henderson 34), and, in the course of the action, the women in the play are empowered, and Aristophanes explores the whole issue of gender stereotyping by both confirming them for comic purposes and subverting them in the course of the plot. To describe the main theme of Lysistrata as ‘peace’ is to limit and to diminish the play’s other themes.
Of course, the concomitant corollary of peace is war. The Peloponnesian War was going badly for Athens when Aristophanes wrote the play: many of its allies had changed their allegiance to the Spartans and the military expedition to Sicily had been a complete disaster with the loss of many young Athenians (Tritle 59). The war was increasingly expensive too. Tritle writes that “war permeated Athenian and Greek society and its violence and traumas echoed everywhere” (60). Certainly at various points in the play the women lament “the loss of their sons, their loneliness, and the sterile wasting away of the younger generations” (Harsh 294), and “powerful appeal for establishing Pan-Hellenic peace and unity” (292). Certainly, for Tritle, the play has as much to say about war as it does about peace. He asserts that Aristophanes “takes aim at the violent consequences of war” (59) and that the play makes frequent reference to “the stresses and trauma of war” (60).
However, Lysistrata has other themes and preoccupations. As far as gender stereotyping goes, on the one hand, Aristophanes uses them for comic effect: for example, he portrays the women as sex-obsessed – at the start of the play Lysistrata has to be very persuasive to convince the women to agree to her proposed sex strike, and there is much comedy produced by references to sex toys and dildos that the women of Athens resort to while their men are away fighting. On the other hand, once the women have taken their oath, Lysistrata takes on some of the qualities associated with men: she divides the women, like an army commander, into two battalions. The older women are ordered to attack and seize the Acropolis, while the younger women are sent home to dress provocatively and to act flirtatiously, but to deny their husbands any sex. The seizing of the Acropolis is an important act, since it acted as the treasury for Athens and so, by seizing the money that is needed to fund the war, the women are taking more direct political action than the sex strike represents. Snodgrass praises the seizure of the Acropolis because it empowers the women by allowing “the administration of public funds by females to stop the waste of money and the lives of young male recruits” (342). The gates to the Acropolis are carefully guarded by the women, but even this has sexual connotations, as the Greek word for gates was also a slang term for the vagina. The seizure of the city’s finances is a much more profound attack on a society dominated by men, than a refusal to have sex and leads Robson to claim that it is a “subversive play” (192) – a direct and profound attack on a dominant patriarchy. One of the funniest scenes in the play and one which also presents men as foolish and ridiculous is the visit of the magistrate to negotiate with Lysistrata. He appears so foolish because Lysistrata is given better arguments by Aristophanes. In response to the magistrate says that “women share none of the war’s burdens” (Aristophanes 737), she responds with passion:
When the magistrate responds by pointing out that men grow old too, Lysistrata replies that it is far easier for an old man to find a wife than for an old woman, past child-bearing age. The magistrate is humiliated by being dressed up by the women to resemble a woman (in some productions). The magistrates behaviour in this scene and what he says leads Henderson to comment that “the powers that be are portrayed unsympathetically as self-interested, corrupt and misguided, and the status quo as simply burdensome for ordinary, decent people” (36). Shortly after this encounter the Leader of the women’s chorus asserts the right of women in Athens to be treated fairly and with more consideration, because of their contribution to Athenian society:
I owe it to the polis to offer some good advice. And even if I was born a woman, don’t hold it against me that I manage to suggest something better than we’ve got now. I have a stake in our community: my contribution is men. You miserable geezers have no stake, since you’ve squandered your paternal inheritance, won in the Persian Wars, and now pay no taxes in return. (739)
She then threatens the men’s leader with a good kicking. It is probably passages like this that encouraged Snodgrass to describe the play as “an ebullient feminist farce” which presents “demonstrative, principled wives as forces for peace and order” (341). In reality, in classical Athens, women could play no part in politics and were wholly subservient to men.
The play ends with the men agreeing to peace and the sex strike being called off. However, in reality, the war against Sparta dragged on for several more years, so Aristophanes’ play remained a comic fantasy of the way Athens might have worked if women had wielded more power. Lysistrata is right to be thought of as a peace play, but, inevitably, it is also a play about the empowerment of women since all the men support the war and all the women oppose it.
Works Cited
Aristophanes. Lysistrata. Pages 720 – 756 in The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. Print.
Harsh, Philip Whaley. A Handbook of Classical Drama. New York: Stanford University Press, 1944. Print.
Henderson, Jeffrey. Three Plays by Aristophanes. London: Routledge, 2010. Print.
Robson, James. Aristophanes: An Introduction. London: A. & C. Black, 2013. Print.
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009. Print.
Tritle, Lawrence A. The Peloponnesian War. New York: Greenwood Publishing Company, 2004. Print.
