Building the Body

labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
juillet/décembre 2012 - julho /dezembro 2012

Building the Body: The Human Image and the Construction of Gender in the Ancient Greek World

Mary Ann Eaverly

Abstract

As cultural critics such as Judith Butler have shown, gender functions as a societal construct. A historical overview (Bronze Age – Classical Period) reveals some of the ways in which the artistic portrayal of the human image serves to establish and promote gender categories within the ancient Greek world. Variables such as costume, skin color, and types of scenes portrayed are all used for this purpose. In the case of Greek art there is a clear emphasis on a binary division of gender between male and female.

key-words: gender, societal construct, human image

Introduction

Judith Butler among others (Foucault, for example) has analyzed gender as a concept which goes beyond biology and depends upon societal constraints and the reinforcement of those constraints. As she states:“[...] gender is a kind of doing, an incessant activity performed, in part without one’s knowing… (It is) a different sort of identity and its relation to anatomy is complex.” (Butler, 2004 :1 and p.63)

Definitions of gender roles and even numbers of genders can vary from society to society and during different periods within individual societies. Indeed, in twenty-first-century America much debate surrounds the concept of transexuality and the fluidity of gender distinctions that seemed in earlier periods to be hard-and-fast categories. (On this debate see again Butler, 2004). Gender is thus something that is defined and reinforced within the context of a specific society.

Ancient art provides a window into the ways in which other cultures addressed the issue of societal roles. Art historical research gives us the opportunity to examine how art could be used to define and re-enforce gender roles. This essay focuses primarily on the use of artistic representations as tools of gender construction, examining the iconography of such depictions in the ancient Greek world. What do images tell us about underlying ideas of gender in a given society and what role do they play in supporting those ideas? A number of caveats apply. Among these is the question of who is doing the constructing. While some of the societies we will be examining have a political structure which could promote a top-down directive of artistic resources, others do not and unraveling whose ideas certain depictions represent remains problematic (Butler, 2004 ). We can generally relate art to the tastes of societal elites, but explicit control is difficult to prove. We can perhaps say that art produced in a given period is reflective of societal attitudes during that period, regardless of whether we can determine an underlying mechanism that caused those attitudes in the first place.

There is also the caveat that art is only one aspect of gender construction and is open to a variety of interpretations, which cannot escape the modern scholars’ own biases. In addition, for many periods we have no supporting contemporary literary sources to help balance the visual record. Even when we do have such sources they do not necessarily specifically address the areas that we are investigating. All that aside, it is still a valuable exercise to examine the ways in which other societies handled these issues, in particular ancient Greece since that civilization is foundational to the way in which gender is viewed in the Western World. One of Ancient Greece’s essential bequests is a binary definition of gender. As we shall see, male and female as oppositional polarities is a fundamental component of Greek thought and is manifest in the artistic record in a number of ways.

When examining ancient art, clues to gender construction can be seen in the repertoire of figural scenes, the activities in which figures are engaged, and the style in which the figures are depicted. The body is often the primary locus of distinction. In addition to secondary sexual characteristics (breasts, the penis), costume, hairstyle, relative scale, body morphology, and even skin color play a role in defining and categorizing what is male and what is female in the Ancient Greek artistic record. These images are particularly valuable for examining gender roles, since they are not, much as we would like them to be, necessarily realistic. Only certain aspects of life are depicted and for the most part the figures shown are types, not specific individuals with a figural style strongly biased toward ideal figures—youthful and ‘perfect.’ They express a society’s ideal view of itself and while they may bear a relationship to reality they are by no means point-by-point depictions of it. Rather they reflect underlying views of how things should be, not necessarily how they are.

Gender issues have been the focus of much scholarly research by Classical Archaeologists and Art Historians in the last several decades and have generated a massive bibliography. What follows is a chronological survey, drawing upon the work of many scholars, of some of the ways in which the Greek world presented ideological views of gender in artistic form. These images served to both establish and to reify gender roles.

Bronze Age

Classical Archaeologists usually begin the story of ancient Greek civilization with the Bronze Age (3000-1100 BCE). During this period two major groups flourished in the Aegean—the Minoans on Crete and the Mycenaeans on the mainland of Greece. Both groups created large buildings, usually called palaces by archaeologists, which seem to have served as the focus of administrative and government organization. While the Mycenaeans are considered early Greeks, the origin of the Minoans is less clear. Minoan civilization takes precedence chronologically and indeed is eventually taken over by the Mycenaeans. Since Minoan civilization flourished earlier we shall look at their artistic repertoire first. We must keep in mind that this is one of the most difficult periods to study as we are limited by our inability to read Minoan writing (Linear A). This forces reliance on descriptions of ancient Crete from much later sources, such as the eighth-century BCE works of Homer, which mention earlier events which at best by that time could qualify as a dim memory passed down through generations.

What we do have are many artistic depictions- wall paintings (frescoes) and figurines, seals and other glyptic- the analysis of which has suggested some patterns of gender relations. Costume and body type are major features used in Minoan representations to differentiate between male and female. Women are typically shown wearing a long layered skirt and short-sleeved jacket with no blouse so that the breasts are visible. Men are shown wearing only a short kilt. In addition, male and female are distinguished by skin color. Men are dark brown and women white. As we shall see, such a distinction, which is also found in later Greek art, is often attributed to the idea that women lived indoor lives and men outdoors. Yet many of these Minoan women are seen in settings which suggest the outdoors. This fundamental color distinction is generally considered to have been borrowed from Egypt, a civilization with which the Minoans were in direct contact. In Egypt this color distinction signifies the ideal roles of male and female as opposites whose union completes the universe.(Eaverly,2008) The meaning need not necessarily have been borrowed by the Minoans from the Egyptians, but one doubts that male/female color differentiation would have been adopted if it did not express something about gender that was important to the Minoans.

A preponderance of images of women in Minoan art who are often involved in what seems to be ritual activity has led to debates about the importance of a mother goddess and/or powerful priestesses and the possibility that this society was a matriarchy. Without subsidiary literary evidence such judgments are difficult to prove. Large-scale images of women do not necessarily mean that women occupied a politically powerful role in a society. A modern parallel is provided by a meeting of the U.S Catholic bishops, reported on in a newspaper several years ago, in which a floor-to-ceiling painting of the Virgin Mary dominates a room in which all of the participants in the room and in the church hierarchy are male. In this case at least, a dominating artistic image does not translate into temporal power. However, some intriguing observations have been made from examination of Minoan painting. Olsen has, for example, shown that the Minoan artistic repertoire does not include images of women with infants. Thus if the Minoans did in fact have a “mother goddess” nurturing the young, often viewed as a traditional female role, was not part of her sphere or at least is not the role given emphasis.(Olsen,1998) A large-scale painting from the island of Thera which shows only women engaged in gathering saffron may point to an important role in health maintenance performed by Minoan women, since saffron provides a vital dietary vitamin supplement. (Rehak,1996) This would emphasize an important contribution of Minoan women. The fact that no men are present in the scene is congruent with Minoan art in which male and female are usually shown involved in distinct areas of action. While the Minoan world provides artistic distinctions of costume, skin, color, and sphere of activity between male and female, what exactly these roles meant in their society is not easy for modern scholars to decipher.

Perhaps the most complicated of these questions arises when one of the markers becomes a variable. That is, while gender markers such as costume and skin color are usually clear, there are two exceptions which have proven very troubling. One is the so-called bull-jump fresco in which figures are shown leaping over a bull. All of the figures wear a loincloth and codpiece, a costume which should indicate that they are men, but of the four individuals shown two are painted white, the traditional female color. A fresco called by its excavator the Priest-king is usually restored as a male wearing a crown, but here again the flesh is white. Does this fluidity mark some kind of liminal state, or is it an indication of a third gender? We know that in later historical Greece there are rites of passage for males which require cross dressing. In Mesopotamia, analysis of figures on cylinder seals has shown that a third gender is often depicted and is mentioned in literature.(Pollock and Bernbeck, 2000) Again, without subsidiary evidence from writing for the Minoans we are left to recognize that gender was an important marker, but the exact significance of the roles expressed by the images is unclear.

For the Mycenaeans, the Bronze Age civilization which eventually took over the Minoan, we do have literary evidence. The Mycenaean’s adopt many Minoan artistic practices, including decorating walls with paintings. Their figure style is much the same, including costume and the use of skin color to distinguish between male and female. Yet that they do differ in the construction of women’s roles is shown by the prevalence of an image not found in the Minoan world—the kourotrophos, a woman holding a child. Not depicted in painting in either society, this type is prevalent in Mycenaean terracotta figurines. While the Mycenaeans may have inherited the iconography of depicting women in painting from the Minoans, they did not share the same ideas about female roles. These figurines suggest that nurturing or, as Olsen suggests, domestic space as the sphere of women is an idea which is part of the Mycenaeans' own construction of gender. Their writing, Linear B, can be read. Although it was used primarily for record keeping and not for literature, it does provide valuable information about social organization since it lists groups of individuals attached to the palaces. These records show little overlap in male and female activities and indicate that child rearing is definitely part of the woman’s sphere.

Dark Ages

The Mycenaean world collapsed for reasons which are still debated (climate change, invasion, dynastic struggles have all been proposed) and Greece enters a period of much-reduced material culture. The period from 1100-900 BCE is often called the Dark Ages by archaeologists because the level of material culture is very low and thus difficult to interpret. In addition, at least at the beginning of the period, writing is no longer practiced. Athens takes the lead in the emergence of Greece from this period. The first sign of renewed vigor comes in the form of pottery used as containers for ashes of the deceased. Found primarily in graves, these vases initially are decorated with purely geometric designs (circles, squiggly lines, etc.) and not with figures, either human or animal. However, the absence of the human figure does not mean that gender distinctions are not made and that these vases cannot be used to emphasize and reify gender roles. For example, distinct shapes are used for male and female burials. While the type of vase used for both sexes is called an amphora, in female burials the handles are placed at the widest part of the vase, the “belly,” perhaps emphasizing female fertility; for males the handles are placed on the neck or shoulder of the vase. Certainly later Greek authors emphasized the role of women as containers in reproduction. Women held the seed deposited by the male which, growing in the “vessel” of the woman’s body, would become a child. While the question of what survived the collapse of Mycenaean civilization is debatable, it is interesting to note that the sharp gender divisions found in Mycenaean Linear B tablets are also present in Dark Age Greece; whether this is continuity or simply coincidence is unknown.

Later, when the human figure becomes part of this period’s vase decoration, all figures are dark silhouettes, composed of geometric forms, but male and female are clearly distinguished by costume and hairstyle. Women have long hair and wear long dresses. Men have short hair and beards and wear kilts or belts. Langdon’s analysis of costume and types of scenes has shown that the role emphasized for women is that of maiden, or parthenos, an unmarried and thus an economically important member of society, since marriage is a method of power exchange among elite families.

Orientalizing Period

Greek representational art moves beyond the geometric under the influence of renewed contact with the civilizations of the Near East and Egypt. (Contact was lost after the collapse of the Mycenaean world). Because of the heavy eastern influence, the period from 700-600 BCE is called by archaeologists the Orientalizing Period. Both of these areas provide artistic models for the depiction of gender. In particular, Egypt continues the use of color to distinguish between male and female, while in the Near East men are often painted the white color which in Egypt is reserved for women and indeed women are rarely depicted in monumental art of this region. Receptivity to eastern artistic influence varies among Greek cities, with Corinth being among the most receptive and Athens among the least. During this period Corinthian artists create a style of vase painting called blackfigure in which the dark shiny figural silhouettes stand out against the lighter background of the fired clay. Figures are also sometimes outlined rather than being depicted as solid blocks of dark glaze. The Corinthian vase painter, however, adopts the Egyptian practice of dark/light male/female color differentiation. The flesh of male figures, painted in outline, is given an added layer of dark brown, and female figures in outline or silhouette are painted with a layer of additional white paint (called added white).When Athenian vase painters adopt black-figure technique, their work becomes the pre-eminent vase painting in the ancient Greek world.

Archaic Period

During this period (600-480 BCE) Athenian vases are a major source of iconographical information. They are decorated with scenes from mythology, but also with many images which at least seem to show everyday life—women getting water at a fountain, men drinking at the all-male drinking party called the symposium, etc. Again, here art and reality are not necessarily the same thing. These are not portraits and the figures depicted are for the most part all youthful and unblemished, representing the ideal rather than the real. Not all aspects of ancient Athenian life are portrayed. Vases are ubiquitous and were used in daily life as well as being exported and placed in tombs. They provide a vast repertoire of scenes and figures. Figural style and presentation seem to conform to, and thus can be seen as reinforcing, ideas about gender relations which are preserved in the literary sources of the period. For example, a common trope is that men and women are different species. The story of Pandora, given its most extensive treatment in the works of Hesiod, tells of the completely separate creation of woman as a punishment for men. Literature supports male and female as a central dichotomy in Greek society, with men as rational and women as irrational poles.

This is emphasized on vases by the use of different skin colors for male and female. Men are dark and women are light. Many scholars have supported the idea that this treatment represents the fact that women stayed indoors, but it is more congruent with the ideological belief that woman’s role was of the house, since the fact that women participated in religious festivals, drew water at wells, and left the house on a variety of occasions voids any idea of actual total seclusion. The artistic depiction supports an idealized vision of gender relations, in which male/female is the dominant polarity. The male sphere is outside and the female inside, despite the fact that real women do, in fact, leave the house. White for female flesh suggests the pallor of the interior. Dark suggests the exterior world of action (warfare, politics, etc). Gestures of male and female figures on these vases are also gender specific. For example, gestures of supplication are primarily made by women. (McNiven, 2000). Sculpture also shows sharp male/female distinctions. During this period free-standing marble statues of men (kouros, plural kouroi) and women (kore, plural korai) are set up by wealthy individuals as grave markers and as offerings to the gods. The kouroi are nude, the korai clothed. Indeed male nudity is something which the Greeks felt marked them from other civilizations of the ancient world.

Not every image of a man is nude. Greek warriors and athletes are often shown nude, but not always. While women are not shown nude in sculpture, they are sometimes shown nude on vase painting, and the issue of their identity has become a vexing one. Clearly there are some circumstances in which nudity is a significant iconographic marker of gender separation, but the exact parameters are unclear. The nudity of the kouroi has been linked to their possible status as emblems of the young male beauty which was so prized in the pederastic relationships which elite men entered into with pre-pubescent boys. On the other hand, nude women on vases are usually identified by scholars as prostitutes because of the literary sources which emphasize that respectable women do not take part in male drinking parties, which is the primary scenario in which female nudity appears. The question arises as to where the image of the female body fits into a society in which the elite placed such a high premium on male beauty? Which body is the locus of eroticism? Here it has been difficult for modern scholars to clearly read the ancient gender construct. In the later Archaic period, scenes of women and men engaged in intercourse also become more frequent on vases, but women are never shown in the dominant position. Men are the penetrators and women are the penetrated, which is congruent with an active societal role for men and a passive one for women. Around the same time, vase painters reverse the background field on vases from the dark fired clay color to the dark shiny color previously used for figural decoration.

This new style -redfigure- also witnesses the abandonment of the use of flesh color differentiation as a fundamental signifier of male/female difference which was a matter of emphasis in the previous period. The reasons for this change are not fully understood, but it is not a change that reflects a view of women as equal to men or no longer different from men. Literature continues to emphasize that woman’s fundamental nature is different from man’s and that women belong in the home, not in the outdoor world of men’s activities. In particular, the developing Athenian democratic system is a males-only system. Women can neither hold office, participate in debate, or vote. Despite the abandonment of the graphic separation indicated by skin color differentiation, this message of difference continues to be supported artistically through an increased interest in the scenes of women in a more narrow range of activities, mostly indoors or involving child care or playing music with other groups of women. (Lewis, 2002)

Classical Period

Long considered the high point of Greek art, the fifth and fourth centuries BCE witness the celebration of Athens victory over the Persians through the monumental building program which took place on the Athenian Acropolis. Perhaps the most famous element of the program is the Parthenon, the temple to Athena. Justly praised for the perfection of its architecture, it also is decorated with a sophisticated sculptural program whose meaning has been open to much scholarly debate. This much is clear. The pediments at the front and back of the temple celebrate Athena’s birth and her triumph over the god Poseidon to become patron god of Athens. These scenes make sense in honoring the goddess whom the Athenians believed helped them to victory. The meaning of two other elements of the sculptural program—the sculpted metopes which decorate the exterior of the building and the frieze which runs along the outside of the building’s main room, the cella—is less clear.

The metopes depict combats and have been interpreted as metaphors for the defeat of the Persians, since they feature foreign or bestial mythological figures which could be a metaphor for the Persians, considered by the Athenians to be foreign barbarians. For example, one set of metopes showing the mythological battle of Lapiths against centaurs (Centauromachy) would represent civilization over barbarians, just as the Athenians felt their victory was. Barringer’s recent analysis suggests that one can also read these sculptures as a statement of gender relations. She sees the Centauromachy as linked to another set of metope scenes showing Amazons (mythological women warriors) in combat. The women in the Centauromachy are at a wedding and would symbolize chaste women who need to be protected, while the Amazon women indicate the danger of uncontained women. Other metopes depict the victory of the gods over the giants (Gigantomachy) aided by Athena and the Fall of Troy. Here again she would see the emphasis on correct womanhood. Athena is a warrior but she is a virgin and, because she was born from the head of her father Zeus, has an almost androgynous quality which militates against the standard trope of the unreliability and inferiority of women.

The Trojan War images would allude to the cause of the war, a treacherous woman (Helen) (Barringer,2008). That gender tensions and discussions about the proper place of women were very much in the forefront during this period is supported by the literary sources. In particular the tragic playwrights wrestle with these problems through such female characters as Medea and Antigone. Medea, a foreign sorceress who murders her children, and Antigone, a maiden who stands against the traditional laws of the state, are examples of the subversion of traditional female roles.

Further evidence for the working out of these issues can perhaps be seen inside the temple. The Parthenon, like most Greek temples, was built to hold the cult statue of the goddess, in this case a colossal gold and ivory statue of Athena, fully armed and carrying the winged goddess Victory in her outstretched hand. However, the statue stands on a base which depicts the creation of Pandora, the foundation story for the idea of separation and difference between men and women. Placed beneath the female and yet almost androgynous Athena, does this image also reinforce the idea that women are separate and need to be contained?

The last component of the Parthenon, the frieze, has proved to be the most difficult for modern scholars to translate. No ancient source identifies its theme. Many elements suggest that it depicts the Pan-Athenaic procession, a religious ceremony in which an older wooden statue of Athena is given a new specially woven dress. However, the frieze does not include all the elements of the actual procession attested to in literary sources and the fact that the figures might be meant to represent actual Athenians rather than a mythological metaphor has troubled scholars since this would be a rare occurrence in temple decoration. Connelly has proposed that the actual theme is not the Panathenaic procession but the myth of the willing sacrifice of one of the daughters of an early Athenian king to save the city. (Connelly,1996) This sacrifice would reinforce the idea of how the ideal good woman should behave. While all of these interpretations mesh with ideas about women, the Parthenon is also a victory monument and it is by no means certain that messages about gender were an explicit theme. Yet the rhetoric of fundamental difference between men and women and the need to contain the female remain prevalent in literary sources. In a period in which these issues are actively being confronted, perhaps we are looking at a more nuanced representation of gender than the previously sharp distinctions and polarities, which artistic devices such as color helped to construct and reinforce.

A further example of working out issues of gender anxiety in Athens during this period is also the figure of the Amazon. Stewart has noted that during this period Amazons’ presence in vase painting increases (we have already noted their appearance on the Parthenon metopes). Since Amazons are warrior women who need men only for reproductive purposes, they can be read as the locus of ideas about what a woman should not be (untamed, undomesticated). However, the fact that they are always defeated in their battles with males also helps support the “correct” order of gender relations. Stewart suggests that they may also serve as an artistic statement of the new citizenship laws in Athens (Stewart,1995). These laws emphasize that to be an Athenian citizen both of a man’s parents must be Athenians. The Amazons could thus also serve to represent the idea of the foreign woman, someone who is unsuitable as a marriage partner and disruptive to the status of the male citizen. Again, imagery is being used to support ideas about gender relations.

In the fourth century BCE, the first totally nude female statue is sculpted by Praxiteles. The statue is not of an ordinary woman but of the goddess of love and sex, Aphrodite. The statue was created as a religious offering for the people of Knidos; thus many parameters frame its unique position as the first Greek statue of a nude female. Nudity is no longer a marker solely of male identity in the sculptural repertoire. But whether this nudity carries the same message as male nudity is debatable. Male nudes in Greek art do not seem to need a pretext for their nudity. They stand straightforwardly or they take part in athletic contests or battles. Nudity for the female is in a context of vulnerability, in the case of the Aphrodite of Knidos caught bathing by a presumed undepicted male viewer. Nude females on vases are usually considered to be paid companions. In earlier art, women are sometimes shown with their bodies partially exposed, but that is usually again in a situation of vulnerability—pursuit or attack. Thus examination of the artistic record reveals that the seemingly same iconographic device (nudity) can have different meanings when applied to different genders. The contrast between the uses could reinforce in the viewer’s mind the idealized male/female roles of active initiator and passive receiver. This is in line with what we have seen to be a persistent valuation of woman as “other” and as something which must be controlled and contained. While the particular artistic devices used to express this have changed throughout the periods under examination, the theme has been consistent and art has been used to visually construct this particular ideological viewpoint and the roles which support it.

Conclusion

The ways in which gender roles are demarcated in ancient Greece society are not the only way to do this, and indeed even within Greece depictions can vary. We have spent the most time in Athens because that is the city with some of the best preserved remains. But Sparta, for example, where women had a different set of expectations than Athenian women, produces a series of bronze figurines in which women are shown partially nude and running, an active pose which is consonant with the Spartan ideal that strong women produce strong warrior sons. Outside of Greece different markers prevail, but art is still used to express and reinforce underlying beliefs. In Egypt, not only color but often scale and relative position of male and female figures is used to show gender-based distinctions. Of course, male and female are not the only designations that are used in every society. As mentioned above, in the Near East multiple gender categories are used. For Greece in particular, however, we have seen that art expresses an underlying male/female polarity which is at the heart of Greek gender ideas. This message was conveyed in items of everyday use such as vases as well as in large-scale public dedications. The ubiquity of artistic representations meant that the messages they contained were constantly visible and could both state and reinforce underlying ideologies of gender relations. This is not to say that we can necessarily pinpoint conscious decisions to depict scenes in certain ways, but rather that they reflect societal ideas and are acceptable because they are congruent with a society’s underlying beliefs. Art can then both give visual expression to these ideas and, through the cumulative effect it has on the viewer, serve to reinforce or – if the customary imagery is subverted – potentially challenge those beliefs.

Biography

Mary Ann Eaverly is an Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Florida. She received her A.B in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College and her PhD in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan. She is the author of Archaic Greek EquestrianSculpture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996) and Tan Men, Pale Women: Color and Gender in Ancient Greek and Egyptian Painting (Forthcoming University of Michigan Press) as well as numerous articles on ancient art. In addition, she has co-authored, with Marsha Bryant (UF English Dept.), several articles on women poets and Classical Mythology.

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labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
juillet/décembre 2012 - julho /dezembro 2012