Women's relationships in classical Attika
<p>This thesis offers a new assessment of the relationships of fifth- and fourth-century Attic women, of citizen and metic status. Chapter 1 demonstrates women’s capacity to build and use relationships through and against the vicissitudes of their lives, particularly their transitions between...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | Greek, Ancient (to 1453) English |
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2021
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| Summary: | <p>This thesis offers a new assessment of the relationships of fifth- and fourth-century Attic women, of citizen and metic status. Chapter 1 demonstrates women’s capacity to build and use relationships through and against the vicissitudes of their lives, particularly their transitions between marriages and households. Chapter 2 argues for women’s ability to shape formal and informal kinship structures in response to their own affective relationships. Chapter 3 suggests that women could use their relationships with enslaved people, particularly enslaved women, either to confirm or challenge their other roles and relationships within the household. Chapter 4 shows how income-generating work expanded women’s social networks, gave them opportunities publicly to present themselves in terms and contexts independent of their family relationships, and enabled them to redefine their roles within their families. Chapter 5 shows how women formed, used, and defined their friendships, considering in particular the role of the neighbourhood and of religion as contexts within which women could shape their social landscapes.</p>
<p>The thesis weighs up different approaches to writing women’s history. Chapter 1 argues for the value of reconstructive biography. Later chapters focus on re-reading narratives about men to draw out the experiences of women, without attempting complete biographies, and on understanding epigraphic testimonies that women were involved in authoring as instances of women’s self-writing—not autobiographies but women’s brief portraits of themselves and others.</p>
<p>The thesis argues that women’s formal and circumstantial relationships did not necessarily commit them to fixed roles or social behaviours but provided a framework within which they could develop and shape their affective relationships and negotiate their own roles. It demonstrates the potential breadth of women’s networks, affiliations, and relationships; how they were formed and changed across the course of women’s lives, and how they cross-cut other groupings and divisions in Attic society. It argues that women were more able to shape their lives and relationships than has previously been thought, and therefore played a more dynamic role in the social history of classical Attika.</p> |
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