Challenging The Traditional Notions Of Women's Roles In Society In Sappho's Poems

To be attractive wives and lovers, most young women were probably taught to compose, sing, and dance in honor of love. Women’s social status was directly related to beauty and how one was presented for potential matchmaking. In poem #30 Sappho tells how the “lucky bridegroom” will have a wife that is “charming to look at” and a face that “Love has lighted with his own beauty, ” describing his fortune in having such a wife whose obvious devotion to the goddess Aphrodite has reaped generous reward. Brides needed to be deemed desirable, which is an area in which Sappho’s school may have trained girls. The bride is now accomplished enough for marriage through her study and devotion and it is an honor that is now bestowed on the husband.

Marriage is seen throughout Sappho’s poems as a social duty that ought to be celebrated despite the inevitable losses it entails, those of friendship and a woman’s identity. The bride will have to leave behind the female community and enter into marriage, where her community and focus will be her husband and future children. Sappho’s poems do not showcase the male perspective of desire, sex, and procreation, but rather highlights the experience of young women as they transition from girlhood to being married women and future mothers. Sappho recognizes that marriage is a civic duty that must be fulfilled, even if it means leaving behind the intimate female friendships. The prioritization of the female experience of marriage and desire, illustrates the importance of giving voice to women’s various experiences of the marriage ritual that is often obscured by the male perspective. What is unique about Sappho’s work is that, in a male dominated society, most tend to characterize female relationships as frivolous and dedicated to domestic rituals, whereas Sappho shows women’s relationships as profound. Women have the opportunity to participate in collective religious and ceremonial actions that is important to the community and themselves. These meaningful friendships between women were part of the female world to which Sappho belonged, and which she invokes often in her poems where through religious rituals where women were able to form deep, emotional connections, thereby creating a female-centric world in which women supported and admired each other. In her work, Sappho portrays herself in meaningful friendships, as well as, romantic relationships with other women; this showcases how interactions between women are at the forefront of her work.

In archaic Greece, women typically claimed the gender roles that society gave them and did not stray from the roles that they were required to fulfill. Both Sappho and Sophocles go against the traditional grain and contribute to our understanding of women in this time period and show women who defied their societies’ gender stratifications. Sappho contributes not only to our understanding of the role of women in the ancient Greek world, but also to the complexity of concepts, such as women’s sexuality and femininity in those times. These fragments showcase the pleasures and pains of Sappho and the women she interacted with. Sophocles work also showcases both the exceptions and the standard experiences for women in Athenian society. Sophocles Antigone violates popular norms for female behavior and represents a deviation from the cultural norm where femininity was synonymous with weakness and masculinity with power. Antigone wins the moral fight over Creon and her feminine stance challenges the male-centric order of things proving that women can be as clever and strong as men in a society where women were seen as less than. Both authors in their respective works challenge the traditional notions of women’s roles in society through a more female-oriented perspective.