Gender Roles in Classical Greece Essay examples -- Term Papers Researc

Gender Roles in Classical GreeceMissing plant CitedIn Classical Greece, roles played by males and females in society were cleared as well as very distinct from each another(prenominal). Expectations to persist in these societal norms were strong, as a breakdown at heart the system could discharge the success of the oikos (the household) and the males reputationtwo of the most meaning(a) facets of Athenian life. The key to a thriving oikos and an unblemished reputation was a good wife who would efficiently and profitably run the household. It was the males role, however, to ensure excellent household management by molding a young woman into a good wife. Women were expected to enter the trades union as a symbolically empty vessel in other words, a nave, uneducated virgin of about 15 historic period who could be easily shaped by a save in two ways her age. Through the instruction of her husband, the empty vessel would be filled with the undeniable information to become a good wife who would maintain an natty household and her husbands reputation, thereby fulfilling the Athenian female sex activity role for citizen women. In order for a young woman to be marriageableunadulterated, inexperienced, and unknowingshe had to have been raised in an extremely furnish environment, given little contact with the world beyond her fathers household. In Xenophons Oeconomicus, the husband, Ischomachos describes his new wife to Socrates How Socrates . . . could she have known anything when I took her, since she came to me when she was not yet fifteen, and had lived previously chthonian diligent supervision in order that she might see and hear as little as possible and ask the fewest possible questions (Oeconom... ...imately men were in command in all situations Ischomachoss wife says, For my guarding and distribution of the indoor things would hold back somewhat ridiculous, I suppose, if it werent your concern to bring in something from removed (Oeconomicus, VII 39). This suggests that even though the wife was the indoor household manager, she was relieve obeying her husbands orders that were the driving force of her own agency within the oikos.Making the transition from living a nave existence under the protection of the father to presiding over the oikos under the supervision of the husband was the ingrained social norm for youthful citizen Athenian women. It is unsurprising, then, that in a venerable society, the young female could only fulfill her societal role as manager of the oikos when her assumed empty vessel was filled by her husband with the proper knowledge.