Gender Roles in Homer and Ancient Greek Drama

The paper «Gender Roles in Homer and Ancient Greek Drama» is written with the aim of revealing the transformation of female gender roles in ancient Greek literature over time, starting from the Archaic to the Classical period of the development of Greek society. The main objectives of this paper are: to identify the main gender roles of women in Greek literature, to identify the specific features of the images of the main gender roles of women, to determine the relations between the sexes within the social reality of literary works. The following results were revealed: the main female gender roles in Greek literature are mother and wife, while other gender roles are scarcely or not mentioned at all. It was also revealed that the main features of the wife as a gender role are such character traits as malleability, fidelity and strict obedience to her husband, breaking out of this image of the heroine was described in a negative way. Another result of this paper is the patriarchal nature of the relationship between husband and wife in Greek literature. Basically, ancient Greek society is characterised by the wife's submission to her husband, as the latter in turn is her «caretaker». Otherwise, when the man dies, the wife goes into the care of the nearest male relative. Husbands, on the other hand, believe that wives are obliged to obey them and be faithful, otherwise they may abandon them. Another result of the work was the transformation of female gender roles in ancient Greek literature. While Homer originally portrayed wives as faithful and malleable, playwrights changed the representation of wives. Beginning with tragedies, images of wives and mothers began to appear in literature more and more often, which included both new interpretations of mythological images and features that previously could be inherent only to men. For example, King Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra had a dual image – her actions had both a masculine and a feminine nature.