blundellrabinowitz.doc

Sue Blundell (Open University, UK) and Nancy Rabinowitz (Hamilton College, NY)

In contemporary feminist theory, especially in film theory, much work has been done on the power of the gaze. We would add to that work the following question: How do gender differences play into a culture’s ways of seeing, and more particularly, into its representations of ways of seeing? How do ways of seeing construct what is understood to be gender? While in the 1970s and 80s some people hypothesised that the gaze was male and a source of male power (Berger 1972, Mulvey 1989), others have challenged that totalizing position, seeing possibilities for female spectatorship The power of the gaze is important to this whole body of work – its association with subjectivity in particular. The general point, at the risk of being simplistic, is that the one looking at is in the position of a subject, while the one “looked at” is the object, and not just of the gaze. In ancient Greece the relative invisibility of women was correlated with an ideology of women’s not looking, in particular not looking at men. Our aim is to interrogate this ideology, and to present evidence, primarily from tragedy and vase-painting, that contradicts this assumption by representing women as viewers. At the end, we will discuss the ways in which women who looked at these women looking would have understood and interpreted them.

Nowadays there is a recognition that in Classical Greece the audiences for visual culture were not necessarily ‘unified and unresisting’ (Stehle and Day 1996, 113, n.2). A number of writers have argued that viewers’ readings of visual texts would have been shaped by their different social identities, experiences and knowledge; and that women viewers were likely to have departed from ‘standard’ male interpretations. In a detailed and perceptive study, Stehle and Day (1996) argue that sexual representations in particular would have elicited readings that were at least in part based on bodily identity. As an illustration, they explore the way in which fifth-century Greek females might have viewed the pediment sculptures of the temple of Zeus at Olympia from their own ‘local gendered perspective’ (101), a hypothetical reading which draws on the authors’ knowledge of Elean women’s religious rituals. Such an initial response may, however, have been ‘blocked’ by a subsequent interpretation that was more in line with male constructs: to recreate this, the writers engage in an analysis of the positioning and interactions of the sculptural figures. Recovering a woman’s initial and more spontaneous perspective is nevertheless important, they argue, because it ‘keeps us from becoming fully complicit with the assumptions of the hegemonic culture about women’s roles.’ (102).

Similar methods of reconstructing alternative readings of art objects have been employed by a number of scholars. Petersen makes use feminist theory, literary texts and close readings of vases in order to recreate a rather more positive version of the bifurcated response outlined by Stehle and Day. She argues that a woman viewing some of the all-female scenes in vase-paintings might ‘liberate herself from the oppression of patriarchal constructs by actively reading her subjectivity in the images of female companionship, even when…they depict groups of females engaged in activities that patriarchy deemed appropriate for women in Attic society.’(1997, 51). Stewart believes that in some situations and for some genres the Greek gaze may have been androgynous rather than male; and he imaginatively reconstructs the responses of Spartans of both sexes to sixth century bronze mirror handles in the form of nude females (1997, 15 & 108-118). Like Petersen, Younger (2002) focuses on women’s subjectivities. In a study of Attic grave stelai he outlines the process whereby a woman visitor to the Kerameikos cemetery in Athens may have read herself into a narrative of intimacy with members of the female groups represented there, experiencing regrets, yearnings or homoerotic feelings with regard to the deceased. Sutton (1992, 31) recognises that the alternative woman’s perspective was something that Greek artists may well have taken into account. Noting the prevalence of more muted versions of male/female pursuit scenes on pots made for women, he suggests that they have been redesigned for the female gaze.

The approach adopted by all these writers involves the construction of hypothetical variant interpretations that are based on detailed analyses of particular art objects, combined with understandings derived from the author’s knowledge of the social context for their reception. In our opinion this is a valid and fertile way of attempting to recreate women’s ways of seeing in an age when females were generally denied a public voice, so that their readings cannot be conveyed to us directly. Both the authors of the present paper have used this approach themselves at one time or another. Rabinowitz (2002, 109), in a study of female interactions on Attic vases, argues that even if the notional audience for vases was male, ‘we need not exclude the possibility that women had different and multiple points of view on what they were seeing’. And in a forthcoming article both authors debate the question of the extent to which women’s readings of the adornment scenes in vase-paintings may have run counter to prevailing hegemonic notions of the role of women in Athenian society (Blundell and Rabinowitz, forthcoming).

In the present paper our aim is not to present an alternative to this method of attempting to recover women’s perspectives. Rather, we wish to introduce a further strand into the process of reconstruction by examining the Greeks’ own ideas about female spectatorship and interpretation. Since most of these ideas are presented by male writers and artists, we certainly do not see them as an infallible guide to Greek women’s actual ways of seeing. But hopefully they will provide us with a useful template against which to measure the historical plausibility of our own hypothetical readings. Is it likely that Greek women read things along the lines we are suggesting? And, perhaps more tellingly, were Greek artists likely to have anticipated women’s viewing acts, and provided them with material that fostered divergent interpretations? A knowledge of the ways in which the Greeks conceptualised viewing may help us to test our hypotheses against the reality of Greek viewing practices, and so come up with tentative answers to these questions. As Stewart maintains (1997, 13), an understanding the Greeks’ scopic regimes should be basic to any attempt to understand their art.

Although the spoken word was undoubtedly of tremendous importance to the Greeks, they seem to have valued visual information even more highly. In tragedy we often observe in the speeches of heralds and messengers the way in which seeing becomes hearing; both are important sources of information. According to the fifth century philosopher Heraclitus, ‘the eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears’ (frag.`101a), while Aristotle in the following century tells us that ‘sight …most of all the senses makes us know, and brings to light many differences between things.’ (Metaphysics 1.1; 980a). For Aristotle, however, sense-perceptions are only the first stage in a whole sequence of mental activities which have to take place before sight is transformed into insight, or knowledge. Many Greek thinkers would have agreed with him, although without engaging in the same level of rigorous analysis. For example, in the earliest stage of their existence, the first generation of human beings ‘saw without seeing, listened without hearing, and passed the length of their lives like shapes in dreams, confused and purposeless’ (Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 447-50). Put simply, there was a general recognition on the part of the Greeks that objects of vision require interpretation, and that interpretation can be difficult. Even straightforward identification of an object may be a problem if we cannot get a clear view of it: something that looks like a warship from a distance, and like a cargo ship when it moves a little closer, may when it finally pitches up on the beach prove to be nothing more than a piece of brushwood (Aesop, Fables 279).

The deeper significance of a correctly identified object can be even harder to determine. Accustomed as they were to using myths as a way of thinking, the Greeks characteristically inferred meaning from signs, or from a combination of signs. So for them a commonplace object might carry a hidden meaning, which could only be uncovered by following through the connections between a whole range of associations. This meant that an object’s meaning might easily be ambiguous - a single object might yield a variety of interpretations. These might be linked, for example, to the forms conferred on an object by a craftsman: the newly enthroned Egyptian pharaoh Amasis managed to reconcile his subjects to his own humble origins by revealing that a much-revered golden statue of a deity was in fact a recycled footbath in which previously ‘they had washed their feet, pissed and vomited.’ (Herodotus 2.172). Or the meaning might shift in accordance with the object’s viewing context: the wily Odysseus realises that to people who have never seen the sea and know nothing of ships, an oar may appear to be a winnowing-fan (Homer, Odyssey 23.267-78). Sometimes a successful interpretation may be blocked because the viewer has no empirical knowledge of the iconographic signs that are being presented. In Aeschylus’ Eumenides, for example, the priestess of Apollo at Delphi fails to identify the Furies because their most distinctive attributes – their livid skin, oozing eyes, and weird clothing – are ones that she has never encountered before (46-59). But from the paintings she has seen she has built up an archive of possible mythological identifications: she knows whom these creatures resemble. So the viewing of art objects is seen as an important form of education. This correspondence carries over into current debates, so that, for instance, Goldhill chastises Carpenter for a too facile discussion of mythic meaning and labelling of objects (1994).

Apollo’s priestess may have failed in her identification, but the Greeks certainly recognised that women as well men could be viewers and interpreters of objects. A woman may be terrified by what she sees, and may prefer to avert her gaze, as Deaneira does when she hangs her head and refuses to watch the battle between her future husband Heracles and the dreadful river monster Achelous (Sophocles, Women of Trachis 1-26). Or she may be required on occasions to lower her eyes in deference to the notion of aidos, or female modesty: as Reeder indicates, eye contact between males and females may have been frowned on in classical Athens because it was thought that a man might be overwhelmed by the erotic charge set off by a woman’s gaze (1995, 125-6). The concept of modesty is correlated with the idea that women were veiled, and by and large restricted to the domestic interior, to the oikos as opposed to the polis. It also correlates with an ideology which stipulated that women should neither speak nor be spoken about. But the notion of women’s ‘downcast eyes’ may have blinded us to the fact that it is quite common in Greek culture for females to be awarded the role of spectators and observers. To review all the literary and visual evidence for these viewing acts would clearly be an enormous task, and is well beyond the scope of this paper. What we propose to do instead is to provide a preliminary survey of the territory by examining a limited number of texts. In the realm of literature we will take our examples from Homer, from the lyric poetry of Sappho and Alcman, and from the fifth century Athenian tragedians. In the visual field, we will be looking at examples of Attic vase-paintings produced in the late sixth and fifth centuries BCE.

Homer

Homer ’s Iliad is a poem about masculine encounters and endeavours, and the female characters are peripheral to the main action. But as bystanders they are ideally placed to observe and comment on the heroic transactions foregrounded by the poet. Andromache, Hekabe and Helen are all on occasions to be found on the walls of Troy, watching the struggles taking place beneath them. When Andromache meets her husband Hektor at one of the city’s gates, her main purpose is to persuade him to remain in Troy instead of returning to the battlefield. But she is able to reinforce her plea with the observation that there is a vulnerable section of the city walls which needs his attention, having already been stormed three times by the Greeks (Iliad 6.433-9). At a later stage, Hektor’s mother Hekabe watches her son from the walls as he takes a stand against Achilles, and urges him not to accept the challenge to single combat (Iliad 22.79-92). But it is Helen who is the poem’s female spectator par excellence. Sitting besides King Priam on a lofty tower, she is able to identify and provide character sketches for a whole string of Greek heroes (3.161-244). Later when Aphrodite mounts the tower to admonish her, Helen penetrates the goddess’s disguise immediately (3.390-98).

In the Iliad, a story about battles, the women are keen-eyed but essentially passive onlookers, who are strikingly unsuccessful in their attempts to restrain their menfolk; their spectatorship, we might say, gets them nowhere. It appears, however, to reconfirm male heroic status in that Helen acknowledges the glory of the Greeks she describes, and Hekabe and Andromache provide a contrast that defines the masculine heroism of Hektor. The Odyssey, by contrast, is a poem that recounts the efforts of a number of heroes, most notably Odysseus, to reintegrate themselves into post-war society. Here the female characters are often at the centre of the stage, and may be actively engaged in the process of recognition, supplying the men with the stable identities that they need if they are to achieve a successful homecoming. As in the Iliad, Helen is the most astute of these observers. When Odysseus’ son Telemachus visits her and her husband in their palace, Menelaus entertains his guest without enquiring who he is; but as soon as Helen enters the room, she comments on the visitor’s likeness to Odysseus, and so the relationship between Telemachus and his long-lost father is confirmed and celebrated (Odyssey 4.120-167). This instantaneous act of identification is the prelude to a set of wartime reminiscences, which demonstrate Helen’s uncanny powers of perception even more effectively. When Odysseus managed to infiltrate Troy disguised as a beggar, Helen relates, she was the only person in the city who recognised him, and as a result she was able to share his secret plans. Menelaus counters with a story about the arrival of the wooden horse in the city: Helen was apparently alone in discerning the hidden contents of this deceptive artefact, and she did her best to reveal its true meaning by walking around it three times calling out the names of the Greek heroes concealed inside it (Odyssey 4.235-289).

Recognition is a key theme in the second half of the poem, where the elaborate tale of Odysseus’ return to his home in Ithaca is recounted. The most famous and dramatic episode occurs when Odysseus, once again disguised as a beggar, is having his feet washed by his old nurse Eurykleia. The suitors who are clogging up the palace have not recognised him, nor has his wife Penelope. But Eurykleia realises who the beggar is when she spots a scar on his leg, and knows it is one that Odysseus received when he was wounded by a wild boar. The extended flashback that includes the boar hunt also introduces us to Odysseus’ maternal grandfather, who had supplied his baby grandson with a name when he was asked to choose one by the nurse as she laid the child on the old man’s knees (Odyssey 19.361-502). The scar is a potent sign of Odysseus’ identity, referring as it does not just to the hero’s bravery and recklessness – both on display in the boar hunt - but also to his lineage and to his very being, encapsulated in his name. The nurse’s recognition of it confirms her close relationship with the man whom she suckled as an infant (Pucci 1995, 90). It also speaks of her familiarity with his body: ‘Then, dear child, you are really Odysseus. I did not know you/ before; not until I had touched my lord all over.’ (19.474-5, trans. Lattimore, 1965).

At this stage in the story Penelope has already performed a partial identification of her husband when she asks for, and receives, an accurate description of a purple mantle, an elaborate brooch, and a ‘shining tunic’ that the hero was wearing when ‘the beggar’ encountered him. She knows them, because she gave them to Odysseus herself (19.215-60). In this, she resembles the wise queen Arete, who earlier on in the story recognised the tunic and mantle worn by Odysseus as ones that she herself had produced with her maidservants (7.233-39). But Penelope’s final recognition of her husband is to be long delayed. When it comes, it involves the design of the couple’s marriage-bed, which has one of its posts carved from a living olive tree (23.173-204). Among the signs whose acknowledgement marks the hero’s progressive re-assumption of his old pre-war identity, the one discovered by the nurse suggests an emotional and physical connection; the one demanded by Penelope affirms the centrality and stability of the couple’s marital relationship.

Lyric and tragedy

Love was associated with the gaze and with subjectivity in ancient Greece. As Claude Calame points out, looking and being looked at are simultaneously part of Greek erotics and the creation of subjectivity. Love, through ‘the gaze that, fixing the desiring subject, now creates another subject, the one who inspires that desire. For it is in the eyes of the man or woman who arouses the libido that Eros is most likely to dwell.’ (1999, 20) Eros is coming from the one who is desirable, but it is received visually (21, citing Plato Cratylus 420 B). ‘Eros thus emanates from the gaze of the one who is arousing desire and then invades the one who is desiring, enabling the latter to say first “I see,” then “I love.”’ (21) So both the one who looks and the one who is looked at gain subjectivity, according to Calame.

In Sappho and Alcman we have examples of this looking exchanged between two women. Though there are huge bodies of scholarship debating the ages and the mutuality of the women in Sappho, it is not debatable that female homoerotic desire operates through the gaze. In ‘Phainetai moi,’ (frag. 31) the importance of seeing is implicit in the first word of the poem, and is continued with the words for seeing in 7 and 10 (idô and opatessi). When the speaker looks at her beloved in the presence of another lover, she can no longer see; thus, her subjectivity is shattered by love. Eva Stehle and Ellen Greene both point out that the woman’s gaze does not objectify her love object (Stehle 1997 294; Greene 2002; cf. frag. 22 V, also related to seeing). In fragment 16, women’s ways of knowing are related to sight, and differentiated from masculine values (duBois, Winkler). Here love is explicitly related to the act of interpretation and evaluation:

Some say a squadron of horse, some, infantry,
Some, ships, are the loveliest thing on the black earth. But I say
It’s what you desire.

And it’s easy enough to get everyone to grasp this. For the woman who far surpassed
All women in beauty, Helen, left behind 
the very best
of husbands, sailed to Troy,
and gave no thought at all to child
or loving parents, but . . . . led her astray
. . . .
lightly….
Reminded me now of Anaktoria
Who is elsewhere.

I’d rather see her comely step,
The shining luster of her face
Than the Lydians’ chariots and infantry
in armor. (Trans. Bing and Cohen)

Here Sappho clearly distinguishes military might and a beautiful woman, and chooses the sight of a beautiful woman. While in epic, women’s seeing is related to the military in the cases of both Helen and Andromache, here Helen is most definitely counterbalanced with the military. Moreover, the visual element throughout the Sapphic corpus emphasizes desire rather than recognition or skill in reading male signs; it is, then, possible to see Sappho as countering the epic tradition (Winkler, DuBois), and centering that difference on the female gaze. In Alcman, another archaic lyric poet and author of Partheneia, or maidens’ songs, women’s desire is also aroused by looking at other women, though the poems are fragmentary and difficult of interpretation. Sappho’s sense of self is torn apart by a jealous gaze; in Alcman seeing Agido (Louvre Partheneion—PMG 1 40-41) is to admire her, though, perhaps, a form of rivalry prevents the speaker from praising her. Worn out with desire by Hagesichora, another girl wishes that Philylla would look her way (75-78).

The linkage of women’s desire and the gaze is continued in tragedy, though here directed toward men; once again women are represented as viewers, not necessarily objects of the gaze. Tragedy is, however, much more dangerous than lyric. Thus, Aphrodite arranged for Phaedra to fall in love with Hippolytos upon seeing him (26), and Medea was struck by the sight of Jason, regretfully according to her nurse (prologue CHECK). The choruses also refer to the interrelationship of desire and seeing—perhaps in the context of praying away the power that is so obviously destructive in tragedy (e.g. Antigone, 781ff. cf. Hippolytos chorus 525 ff.). The pleasure, the languorous descriptions of Sappho, which was a counterweight to her pain, is gone from tragedy.

Athenian tragedy is a highly visual medium which requires an attentive gaze on the part of its audiences; and thematically it frequently concerns itself with problems of vision and visibility, of revelation and knowledge (Zeitlin 1994, 140, see also Goldhill 1999). Since tragedy was a performance intensely connected to the democracy (Goldhill 1990, 1999; Rabinowitz 2004, among others), it is of some interest that women are so central to the drama when they were so peripheral to the city as a political entity. In the events surrounding the performance, tribute from the empire was displayed, male orphans of those who had died in battle marched in armor, and honors were conferred upon those (whether citizen or metic) who had served the city. Oddone Longo argues convincingly that ‘These rituals were understood to be celebrations of the polis and of its ideology, and they constituted the immediate framework of the plays.’ (Winkler and Zeitlin 1990, 16). Simon Goldhill maintains that the Great Dionysia was fundamentally a festival of the democratic polis, basing his analysis on the ceremonies before the competition proper (Winkler and Zeitlin 1990, 97-129). More recently David Rosenbloom has asserted that ‘We can understand the City Dionysia and the genre of tragedy as a function of Athenian institutions regulating relations between the inside and outside of the polis--slavery, metoikia, the family, citizenship, warfare and hegemony, the agora and economy, cult and festival.’ (Goff 1995, 104) He points out that ‘The festival and the genre projected an ideal image of Athens and disseminated the principles of Athenian identity. . .’ (105).

That ideal identity of Athenian culture was class and gender based: women were excluded from the cultural production of tragedy as they were from the assembly and juries. But they were arguably in the audience. David Wiles notes in passing that ‘Women were present, and their role as bearers of new life was symbolized by the maiden who walked in front with unripened spring fruit.’ (1997, 26) While there is good reason to believe that women did attend the tragic festival, as with so much else about women in antiquity, it is striking that we cannot really know. The fact that we cannot know does not mean that the gender of the audience was not a significant influence, for instance in the creation of the atmosphere of the event. If you take the view that women were members of the audience, then the playwright must have written for a mixed audience. Another view is that they may have been seated in the back of audience in lesser numbers than men; the seating still arguably distinguished them from the men who were seated in tribal order, which reaffirmed their status as citizens. We must acknowledge that we are talking here about the culture’s ideas of women’s ways of seeing—not actual women, whether they be writers or actors, but representations of women. Nonetheless, if the form as a whole was constructing the city of Athens and was a time for the city to look for instance at the tribute ‘donated’ to Athens, and at the procession of the orphans, then the prominence of women looking within tragedy might provide a model for women in the audience.

One of the main topics of the study of women in antiquity has been the degree of seclusion; in tragedy one way that the ideology of women’s seclusion is alluded to is through women’s invisibility, which would also imply that they don’t see the outside world. As Phaedra is in love because of what she has seen, so she stays within, out of sight, and when she is ashamed at our behaviour she asks to be covered up (Hipp. 134, 246, 250). Similarly, in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, Iphigenia runs away from seeing Achilles out of modesty (1338-45). When Cassandra in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (1178-82) says that she will speak clearly, she says that her prophecy will no longer look out from curtains like the young bride; in this line, Aeschylus refers to the stereotypical gaze of the bride as being enigmatic, and to the veil. Here we have not a statement but a negation that is based on a Greek conception of women’s normative relationship to the gaze: chaste and modest. Clytemnestra, the woman with a man-counselling heart (Ag. 11), problematizes woman’s speech and vision at once when she announces to the Herald and chorus that she shrieked the ritual cry, and didn’t need him to tell her what he had seen at Troy. She knew it through the beacon (587-97). She also is unashamed to come out to greet her lord before the citizen men (855-857). She adopts the traditional when she falsely welcomes Orestes with ‘just eyes’ (Aeschylus, Choephoroi 671); the nurse gives her away and tells Orestes of her falsity (frowning face but laughing eyes, 738).

Nonetheless, women perform some of the same functions of epic, notably in the scenes of ekphrasis (Zeitlin 1994). Clytemnestra’s overwhelming power in the Agamemnon is represented by her power to describe if not to literally see the path of the beacon that she has ordained to give her early warning of Agamemnon’s return. Antigone in Phoenissai is literally on the wall, but here unlike Helen, she is asking not telling, though she does interpret what she is told. Here too, however, the way in which this position of a woman viewing is outside the norm is marked: she can come out, but if a citizen woman should see her, she might be blamed (88-96). The chorus in the Iphigenia in Aulis, also like Helen in Iliad, are again onlookers at the military; these women, in contradistinction to Sappho, do not reject the male model but glorify it. But again, even as they look, they simultaneously corroborate the norm of women’s aidos by saying that they are embarrassed to be looking (187-8). The energy of their looking is underlined because this group of women has no motive given to them other than their desire to see. They are virtually tourists.

The role of women as looking at the army is echoed in the Ion where women describe another public site, this time the temple of Delphi itself. While in this instance the women are servants of Creusa and therefore have a reason to be here, they also give important information about the scene. These incidents of women looking are correlated to more general Greek ideas about visual information, since the IA chorus explains the role of looking in establishing memory (304), while the Ion chorus looking at the architecture of the temple, relates the details to stories they have heard, connecting the visual to the aural. Euripides’ use of women for ekphrasis has been studied by Froma Zeitlin (1994 passim); what is most significant for us is what it adds that women are the onlookers. Given the cultural norm, it adds an element of naivete. That is, cultural clichés can be given new life by their instantiation by women spectators.

At the same time, the Ion chorus relates the images they recognize to women’s weaving for that is where they heard the stories that are the source of the decorations (197), and thus they bring up another motif relevant to women’s spectatorship. In the Ion the recognition of mother and son, crucial to the tragedy’s effect, is accomplished by means of signs like those of the Odyssey. In this case, the mother’s knowing depends on an earlier seeing or creation of the objects, while the son is looking in the present. This recognition echoes as well the earlier recognition scene in Aeschylus’ Libation Bearers, where Electra sees Orestes’ hair and foot print for what they are; when she doubts the truth, Orestes tells her to ‘look at this piece of weaving, the work of your hand with its blade strokes and figured design of beasts’ (Lattimore 231-2, parodied in Euripides Electra, 520-44). Sophocles takes up the same theme of recognition and contrasts the lying oral testimony with the true but not believed visual testimony that Chrysothemis offers (which again takes the Aeschylus seen as its referent, Electra 871-920).

Looking at fabric can also connect to the tragic plot or vengeance plot as opposed to moments of recognition, as in the case of Euripides Hekabe, where the women dominate Polymestor through the ruse of their femininity—first, Hekabe pretends that she can’t look at him out of shame at her fallen state (967-69), then, they get him disrobed and disarmed by claiming to want to look at the robes he is wearing to admire the work of Thracian women (1152-57).

The Hekabe relates to another important way in which women’s seeing is meaningful in tragedy. While in Sappho and Alcman, women were looking at women and arousing erotic desire, in tragedy women’s sight is associated with other forms of feeling, for the most part painful; the association with emotion might distinguish their look from the more ‘universal’ associations of vision with life and enlightenment in general, which they also share with men. Without a thorough study of men and women’s activity of looking, it is impossible to say more at this time, however. The examples are legion: Medea’s nurse is afraid of the way she avoids looking at the children and sees danger there (36-38). Medea later looks at her children and regrets that she won’t see their marriages, a shorthand expression for all that she will miss seeing (Medea 1025-26). Thus, it is Hekabe’s looking at the body of Polydorus that initiates the revenge plot, and her pathos is heightened because she has seen the deaths of her other sons and husband (Trojan Women); similarly, the audience feels for Andromache because she has to look on the death of Astyanax (Andromache 7-11). In Sophocles’ Electra, her feeling is increased by what she sees around her, that is, her mother and Aegisthus’ pleasure (265 ff.). The main effect of heightening her emotion is created by her seeing the urn and misrecognizing the ashes of Orestes.

Perhaps the most pathetic (literally) example of a female gaze is that of Iphigenia in Agamemnon, when she is on the altar about to be sacrificed; she strikes the men with her eyes full of pity. The eyes then express emotion even when the mouth is gagged. It is interesting that she is also ‘like a picture’—she can’t talk, but by getting the men to return her gaze, she can perhaps motivate them to remember how she sang at her father’s table (Ag. 240-47). Thus, her sight and her voice, that is, her agency, are both recalled here, though to no avail. Women’s emotion is also related to their seeing in their sleep: Atossa, Io and Clytemnestra each see visions at night, and in each case they are afraid.

There is another role for women as viewers; they often describe inner scenes that can’t be seen by the audience, and in this way they are parallel to the messengers who are always men. Thus, for instance, the priestess at the opening of Eumenides describes what she sees at length (see above, ). Women’s fear is emphasized, and we must note the analogy to Cassandra’s motion before the house of Agamemnon—she sees and recoils. What the priestess sees is also likened to a picture—though one that she can’t quite understand.

Women look at other women in other plays, as well; nurses or caretakers in particular look at the heroic characters. So, for instance, we have the stories of Alcestis, Medea, and Phaedra, told to the chorus of women, as witnessed by their devoted servants. The emotion in Cassandra and the Pythia leads them to try to shield themselves from what they have seen, but these women boldly face the pain of their mistresses. Nonetheless, women’s seeing is in these episodes marked most notably by feeling. Deianeira is struck by feeling for Iole when she sees her, pity (Tr. 298-9, 312, 464)—to see is to pity, reverse of Iphigenia. She also interprets on the basis of what she sees. Her fear at the battle between Achelous and Heracles leads her not to look (see above and lines 523-4 where her eyes receive special mention). Her gaze is distinguished from the male gaze, which is overtaken by lust (548, eyes love to pluck young ones). Later on she sees the tuft of wool and recognizes what she has done. Finally, her Nurse recounts her death in the inner chambers, described as a bridal chamber in a way reminiscent of Alcestis’ last goodbyes.

In tragedy, the most important symbolic uses of visual imagery is related to life and enlightenment: to see the light is to live and to learn. This usage is not gendered (see, e.g. Alcestis facing death). Nonetheless women are given special purview, as they are in tragedy, over their own textiles and recognition; they convey male glory through their view of heroes; they see what is inside and bring it into view through speech. Most importantly, what they see leads to heightened emotionality. Tragedy as itself a visual form may have especial importance for engendering ways of seeing in the audience.

Attic vase-painting

The creation of an Attic vase-painting called for considerable skill on the part of the artist. He was working moreover on a field that was very limited in size, which made it impossible for him to reproduce in great detail the narratives or real-life experiences he was seeking to represent. In composing a scene he relied instead on the selection and juxtaposition of visual elements that were capable of alluding to particular aspects of the story or the experience. So as a skilled craftsman we can expect him to have been self-conscious about his art. And as someone who knew that the whole story would have to be inferred from the signs being presented, we can also expect him to have been aware of the viewer’s input into the construction of a scene’s meaning. There are in fact a number of indications in the paintings themselves that the artist was aware of the need for an attentive gaze on the part of the viewer. These include the eyes which some artists applied to the exterior of wine-cups in the late sixth century BCE: these ‘eye-cups’ engage the viewers’ own eyes, and remind them that their encounter with this vessel will be in part a visual one (eg. Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlungen 589, 590, 591). In addition, the artist may incorporate acts of viewing into a figure scene, and in this way alert the viewer to his or her own visual involvement with the painting. It is with the acts of viewing performed by the female figures in vase-paintings that the rest of this section will be concerned.

The most clearly signposted viewing acts are those that involve bystanders to the main action. A scene may be framed by figures who face inwards and remind us that what is taking place between them is worthy of our close attention (Schefold 1992, 304). Both males and females are to be seen engaged in this form of internal spectatorship. For example, in one vase-painter’s version of an event alluded to by Homer (Iliad 16.667-83), Sleep and Death are seen carrying the body of Sarpedon away from the Trojan battlefield, and are flanked by two upright and immobile male warriors (New York, Metropolitan Museum 1971.11.1). But when these supernatural dispatchers of corpses perform the same task on another pot, the watchers on either side of the picture are Iris, the female messenger of the gods, and (most probably) Europa, Sarpedon’s mother (British Museum E12). Warriors’ mothers in particular tend not to remain motionless when introduced into a scene as spectators; and Europa is to be seen here stretching out her arm in a gesture of mourning. On another vase we see Achilles and Memnon battling away in the centre of a picture, and Thetis and Eos, the heroes’ mothers, observing them from the sidelines (British Museum E468): again, the gestures of the women convey their restlessness and anxiety. Like the women in Homer who survey the battlefield from the walls of Troy, these females are used to comment on the fighting prowess of the male actors, and at the same time to convey the emotional impact of the men’s struggles on the wider society to which they belong. In epic, in tragedy (especially those plays that take the Trojan War as their theme) and in vase-painting, it is the men who fight and the women who reflect the suffering of war.

A similar role to that of the battlefield spectators is performed by the female bystanders who view the struggles between individual gods or heroes, as when Athena and Artemis watch Apollo trying to wrest the Delphic tripod from the grasp of Heracles (Berlin, Antikensammlung F2159). A young man’s pursuit of a vulnerable female falls into a different category of heroic endeavour, and the women companions who rush away from this scene are physically and dramatically more engaged with the action than the average bystander (eg. Louvre G373). But as they turn their heads back towards the couple and fling their arms in the air, they fulfil the same function of directing the viewer’s gaze to the centre, and illustrating one possible emotional reaction to the main event. Like the mourning mothers of the battlefield scenes, they may help to elicit a divided response on the part of the viewer. Are we to admire the strength and determination of the pursuing hero? Or to feel pity for the frightened young women? Painted bystanders like these have been compared to the female choruses of tragedy (Schefold 1992, 304); and here we note that like the choruses they may be used to focalise and problematise an event.

Their presence indicates the necessity not just to see what is happening, but also to interpret it, for there are multiple points of view: if we are inclined to applaud the hero, we are compelled to do so in the teeth of a good deal of opposition. More restrained comment is provided by the women who gather to watch a group of soldiers going off to war (eg. Berlin, Antikensammlung F1718; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 00.331; Siracusa, Museo Archeologico 30747); but they too, as signifiers of the private domestic sphere that the warriors are leaving, serve to remind us of the wider ramifications of warfare. By the classical age, Greek women were being culturally identified as the chief vehicles for the display of emotion (Van Wees 1998, 42-5), an aspect of gender polarisation which seems regrettable, since women’s perceived emotionality may have been used to justify their exclusion from public life (Rabinowitz 2004). But the development does mean that when women appear as spectators in vase-paintings they are probably better equipped than their male counterparts to broaden the range of a scene’s meanings.

When female figures are more closely incorporated into a scene’s main activities, their viewing acts are less easy to identify. The difficulty can be illustrated by considering the antithesis of a viewing act. A woman may be facing another person but have her head lowered – the ‘downcast eyes’ situation; or she may be shown with her head or her whole body turned away from someone who is in close physical proximity. In each case her ability to look is being denied by the artist. It is certainly true that a number of females exhibit these signs of non-looking. For much of the fifth century, new brides and married women are sometimes shown with bent heads as they stand opposite mature males who are presumably their husbands or sons (e.g. Munich, Antikensammlungen J411); and a woman who is resisting unwanted sexual attentions (e.g.Berlin, Antikenmuseum F2279) or is engaged in certain types of erotic activity (e.g. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 1970.233) may be turned away from her male partner. Given the references to modesty and shame that we find in tragedy, we might expect these figures to predominate.

But in fact the scenes where women are facing other figures and have their heads up and their eyes open are legion. We can probably say on this basis that the significance of ‘downcast eyes’ has been greatly exaggerated. But in seeking to identify a positive viewing act we should certainly be looking for more substantial indicators. In what follows we shall be presenting a brief survey of scenes where the gestures or poses of the participants suggest that eye-contact with an object or another person has been established.

Under this definition female viewing, acts are seen to occur in contexts that are largely unsurprising. Ideologically, if not in real life, women in classical Athens were closely associated with the domestic interior, and in vase-paintings interior space is generally defined by objects rather than by architectural features. So women in the home are associated with a huge range of articles. When they are working at a loom or washing clothes in a basin, any act of looking that takes place can be considered secondary to the main activity (for examples, see Lewis 2002, 59-90). But increasingly in the second half of the fifth century, women in the home are assigned a more leisurely lifestyle, and are to be seen seated on chairs or stools contemplating a variety of items. These include jewellery, flowers, fruit, spindles, and balls of wool. Most common of all are the containers - the chests, caskets, baskets and jars whose wealth of symbolic meanings has been discussed in some detail by Lissarrague (1995). It is hard to gauge the precise significance of these acts of contemplation. By establishing a connection between the woman and the object, the painter may simply be seeking to highlight some aspect of her femininity, be it her role as a thing of beauty, her wool-working function, or her task of storing and guarding the household’s goods. However, a woman in this situation does sometimes appear to be assimilated to the object itself – when she gazes steadfastly at an item that she holds in her hands, she is rendered immobile, and identified firmly as someone who does not move around very much in the world (e.g.Paris, Bibliothque Nationale 418). This is especially the case with the large number of females who are shown during this period grasping hand-mirrors (e.g. Mississippi 1977.3.91). By staring so intently at her own image, the woman sanctions the gaze of both the internal and the real-life spectators, and marks herself out as a legitimate object of contemplation. The fact that in some treatments a hand-mirror can closely resemble a spindle indicates an analogy between women’s adornment and their creativity with wool (Keuls 1983), so that we cannot easily separate the two meanings.

Both symbolically and in actuality females in classical Athens were closely associated with the beginning and the end of life, and babies and corpses feature significantly in the list of ‘people’ with whom a woman may establish eye-contact. An infant who is close to its mother almost invariably stretches out its arm towards her, inviting the viewer to imagine the invisible line that links their eyes (e.g..Manchester 40096). A gesture with the arms may also be used to underscore the portrayal of the last visual connection between a woman and a deceased relative. By the fifth century overt displays of grief at funerals were being restricted to female participants, in vase-paintings at least, and when a group of women gathers around a bier, the chief mourner may lean forward to grasp the head of the person who is lying there (e.g. British Museum D62. Religion was another sphere where women’s contribution was seen as highly significant, and in scenes of ritual activity the gaze which a female worshipper directs at a cult image may be emphasised by her pose, with both of her arms raised in a conventional gesture of wonder and awe (e.g. Rome, Villa Giulia 983). In all three of these areas – childcare, funerary ritual and religious worship – vision is associated with a woman’s heightened emotional state. This emotionality may have been used to deprive women of authority in the city, but it did not disqualify them from centrality in religious observance.

Most of the visual exchanges between women and men take place in contexts that can be classed as erotic (see Frontisi-Ducroux 1996). As discussed in the context of lyric poetry, the eyes are seen as the site of attraction. In the Phaedrus (251-5) Plato gives a physiological account of this process when it occurs in homosexual relationships. Waves of particles thrown off by the beautiful face of a youth strike the lover’s eyes and penetrate his soul. The currents of love then released are transmitted back through the man’s eyes, and the youth in turn is smitten with desire. Vase-paintings indicate that in heterosexual encounters too the eyes may be pictured as the primary channel of desire. In courtship scenes a seated woman may turn to look at a man leaning over her chair and resting his hand on her shoulder; in one example (Malibu, J.Paul Getty Museum 91.AE.10), the desire that flows between the couple is made visible in the tiny Erotes that hover over their heads, and the woman moreover is turning away from a hand-mirror, replacing the vision of herself with that of her lover. A bride and a groom who walk in procession to their new home may be similarly bound together through their interlocking gazes, though here it is the male who turns to look at the female as he leads her forward with his hand on her wrist (e.g. Toronto, ROM 929.22.3; Athens, NAM 1174). Increasingly in the second half of the fifth century the bride reciprocates his gaze, a response which is sometimes emphasised by her gesture of drawing back her veil. A miniature Eros fluttering close to her head once again lets us know that this is a revelation that can release a stream of sexual desire. This exchange of looks has suggested to some that marriage was now expected to be a site of greater reciprocity between men and women; it would at least appear that the paintings were expected to represent it in this way.

Of course, a desiring gaze can also be exchanged between couples who are clearly never going to be married; at a symposium, for example, a female entertainer is pictured in a close embrace with a reclining youth, and is drawing his head towards hers till their faces are almost touching (Yale 1913.163). When a god or a hero chases after a hapless young woman, the notion of headlong flight is frequently undercut by the woman’s backward glance (e.g. Mississippi 1977.3.91, base); here, it seems, the viewer is being invited to surmise that the woman’s opposition is waning, and that the relationship is about to become a consensual one. Male domination can elicit a desiring gaze from a woman even when it involves an act of extreme violence. When Achilles falls in love with the Amazon queen Penthesileia in the very act of killing her, the queen’s head is thrown back in apparent rapture and the couple’s eyes are locked together, so that it takes a few moments to notice that the hero is thrusting a sword into Penthesileia’s breast (Munich, Antikensammlungen J370). On occasions, however, women retaliate. Maenads, who in the early years of the fifth century are frequently seen resisting the sexual onslaughts of satyrs, gaze at their aggressors even as they batter them about their heads with their thyrsuses (e.g. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 63.1515). On one wine cup a woman is given no opportunity to look, for she is manhandled by the satyrs as she lies sleeping; but on the other side of the vessel her companion wakes up and locks eyes with her assailant as she raises her weapon over her head (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 01.8072).

The female viewing acts that have been least remarked on are those that take place in women-only contexts, although in recent years that situation has begun to change with the work of Petersen and Rabinowitz (1997 and 2002 respectively; cf. Younger’s work on the looks exchanged in funerary stelai, 2002). In vase-paintings women are generally pictured in group situations, and the majority of the groups consist entirely of females. On pots produced between c530-450 BCE, women are often shown working together, and when their domestic duties take them outdoors, as they do in the late sixth-century images of women drawing water at public fountains, then the scene becomes one of lively social exchange. When these women stand facing each other, their visual and verbal interactions are underlined by the gestures they perform with their arms and hands (e.g. Würzburg, M.von Wagner Museum L304). As already pointed out, from about 450 BCE onwards women-only scenes are increasingly located in enclosed and leisured environments; and while this may well suggest that the vase-painters of the time were seeking to reinforce the ideological notion of women’s seclusion, it also reveals that the woman’s separate sphere was viewed as a social and not a solitary space. Female companionship involves visual communication, and the notion of the female gaze is conveyed, as it is in the scenes already discussed, by turned heads, extended arms and proffered objects.

Sometimes the gazes of these women are not returned. This is frequently the case in scenes that depict the adornment of a bride, where the woman at the centre generally fails to reciprocate the attention that is being lavished on her by her female companions (e.g. Mississippi 1977.3.91). Here the artist’s chief aim seems to be to direct the gaze of the external viewer towards the all-important figure of the bride, and to pass comment on her beauty. But in more generalised adornment scenes looks are often exchanged between women. When these looks are reinforced by intertwined arms, by faces in close proximity, or by a figure of Eros hovering between the women, then we may begin to wonder whether these scenes should not be classified as erotic, especially if the women are also wearing semi-transparent garments (e.g. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 123.160.80; British Museum E461; British Museum E207). When men and women gaze at each other, we are able to talk about eroticism because our knowledge of the context – a marriage, a symposium, a story about an affair between a god and a mortal – makes us aware that this is a situation where sexual relations can and do occur. We are largely ignorant about the degree of intimacy that women might enjoy with each other inside Athenian homes, and vase-painters may have known little more about this than we do. But we certainly cannot rule out the idea that in the view of the painters these relationships were ones where the gaze could be expressive of sexual desire.

The last type of viewing act to be considered is the one where a woman’s face is presented full-frontally – where she gazes out at the real world and locks eyes with the pot’s external viewer. These looks – which can be assigned to both male and female figures – are rare enough to demand our attention, and may suggest a range of meanings (Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, 87-8). In some cases the look may reinforce our sense of a woman’s state of distress. When a female is in the grip of a male pursuer, her helplessness is underlined if one of her companions stares desperately out of the scene, appealing dumbly to someone in another world who cannot possibly lend her any assistance (e.g. Munich, Antikensammlungen 8738; Louvre G373). Sometimes the look is altogether more calm: a woman who turns away from her hand-mirror and looks out at the real-life viewer may be soliciting that viewer’s attention, and confirming herself as a spectacle (e.g. Louvre CA587). But are we not at the same time aware that this is a woman who is admirably capable of returning our curious gaze?

Conclusions

The most obvious conclusion that emerges from our survey of the literary and visual evidence is that in these representations women are not denied the power of the gaze: they are constantly looking - at objects, at whole panoramas, at children, at men and at other women. Their gaze takes many forms, and ought not to be treated reductively. However, the following broad points can be made about the specifics of women’s viewing acts as depicted by artists and poets.

• Women are spectators and admirers of male military strength, but can also convey the sorrow aroused by the spectacle of warfare. In Sappho, we see that a woman’s desire for another woman is established as a counter to military value.

• Women’s visions are translated into cognition – they learn from what they see and use it to solidify memories that they can reflect on later.

• They are particularly attentive viewers of the objects of their own craft skills: they can analyse pieces of fabric, and recognise their own handiwork.

• They can see through disguises, and can recognise a man’s identity even when it is hidden.

• They act as mediators, bringing out into the public arena things that are seen indoors – again they are careful observers of sights that are hidden from other people’s view.

• Female desire operates through the gaze, and can be aroused by visions of men or of women.

• Looking also arouses in them emotions of tenderness, grief, pity and fear.

• They are aware of the power of their gaze, and may sometimes feel compelled to withhold it because of social scripting of modesty and shame.

• Their gaze is strongly linked to subjectivity; nonetheless, in ideology, their subjectivity and power to look is curtailed, especially in the case of young women.

What does all this suggest for the viewer in antiquity, or for the modern scholarly audience? The place of tragedy and pottery in establishing a visual culture in the classical period is clear; but they were not, of course, the only sites where the gaze was operative. The city was full of monuments, and the cemetery was visually adorned as well; the theatre was not the only place for performance—the courtrooms too were performative. All these places for seeing and being seen presented opportunities for the display of gender roles, particularly for women whose gender tends to be the marked rather than the default condition (Stehle 1997 7-8, 72; on performance culture, see Goldhill 1999). It is possible that the women in the audience for tragedy or viewing the pots identified with the representations of women who were, like themselves, caught in the act of seeing. This operation of identification might well have encouraged them in taking an active role in interpreting their own lives.

Tragedy simultaneously sets forth the ideology that women should not speak in public, not look at men, not be seen, and undercuts that ideology by showing ‘women’ doing those very things. While thus showing ‘women’ as subjects, tragedy nonetheless can have an effect of ‘containing’ women by representing their agency as threatening (Rabinowitz 1992). That is the case when women’s looking has disastrous effects, for instance when they fall in love.

With vase-paintings as with tragedy we cannot be dogmatic about the sexual composition of their real-life audiences. It is generally assumed that the great range of pots associated with wine-drinking were made with male viewers in mind, while items such as perfume-jars and cosmetics-boxes were designed primarily for female viewers. But the women in a household – wives, daughters, female slaves - would surely have had opportunities to look at ‘men’s’ pots, and could have followed the lead offered by images of female spectatorship by becoming admirers of the icons of male beauty that they saw exhibited there. Sexual desire, as we have seen, was not ruled out as a possible response on the part of the female viewer. In some instances displays of female emotion within the paintings could have prompted the real-life woman viewer to adopt an interpretation that diverged from that of the average male spectator, and scenes of pursuit or sexual assault in particular could have generated ‘resistant’ readings. Indeed, resistance may well have been a response that was anticipated by the painter, who would have been aware that the female members of his audience were as sensitive as the males to a plurality of meanings. As with tragedy, double vision may have been the effect produced by these readings: for example, warm appreciation of a beautiful youth, coupled with anxiety or fear produced by signs of his sexual domination.

Some of the scenes on the ‘women’s’ pots – for instance, images of the companionship enjoyed by women while they are working together – may have generated less ambivalent responses. But the all-female adornment scenes in particular could have produced sharply divided reactions. These pictures tend to encourage internalisation of the ideological view of women as static and decorous beings, passive objects of a one-way gaze. Yet they can simultaneously offer women an avenue of resistance by furnishing them with evidence of their own subjectivity, showing them gazes that are affectionately reciprocated, and displays of beauty that are actively admired. Athenian culture in general gave sanction to a range of female gazes. However, we do have to question whether these permitted any real escape from patriarchal constructs of femininity.

What about those other real women—those of us in the present? Our relationship to these ancient texts and images is often conflicted. The material is aesthetically and intellectually stimulating, but problematic to the extent that Greek culture has been celebrated as a source of western culture, and has been part of the devaluation of women. The tactic that we have taken in our work is to recognize that neither we nor our ancient counterparts are single, and that we can embrace this body of material using it to ask questions about our own investment in the visual culture of the present as well as of the past.

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ENDNOTES

We would like to express our gratitude to Michael Duigan, whose work-in-progress on the characteristics of Greek interpretative behaviour (part of a PhD thesis to be submitted to the Courtauld Institute of Art in London) has helped us to think about Greek ways of viewing, and in particular has steered us towards examples from Aeschylus, Aesop, and Herodotus.

Longo makes the connection between city and the spectators: ‘The community of the plays' spectators, arranged in the auditorium according to tribal order (no different from what happened on the field of battle or in the burial of the war dead), was not distinct from the community of citizens.’ (1990, 16)

As Frontisi-Ducroux points out (1996, 84) most one-way gazes involve a male subject i.e. it is the man who looks and the woman who is turned away, and this suggests a relationship of domination. The total absence of a gaze – where male and female heads are facing in opposite directions - indicates an even greater degree of discord. One of the contexts in which a one-way gaze occurs is when a man penetrates a woman from behind, or when a woman performs fellatio on a man. This seldom happens in scenes of homosexual intercourse, where the partners generally face each other.

It is often impossible to know whether the courtship scenes depicted in vase-paintings involve prostitutes and mistresses, or potential brides. Literary sources would suggest that pre-marital courtship was not generally a feature of Athenian marriage, since the great majority of unions seem to have been arranged; but Lewis (2002, 188-94) points out that the evidence of the vase-paintings indicates that this form of courtship did sometimes take place in Athens. The woman who turns away from her mirror on the Getty lekythos calls to mind another passage from Plato (Alcibiades 132d-133a), which describes how one sees one’s own image in the eyes of a lover, as in a mirror. See also Frontisi-Ducroux and Vernant 1997, 121-9 and 248-9.

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