To what extent is gender conflict a major theme of Aeschylus' Oresteia - Essay Example

The identification of the role of gender in the work of Greek classics could be particularly useful. In accordance with Zeitlin (1996, p. 9) ‘gender can always be used as a coded sign to stand for some more abstract category in organizing a specific world view and the means to its maintenance or transformation’. From another point of view, it is stated that for Greek classics ‘Gender is a primary articulator of the social order, of history, and especially of the history of welfare’ (Porter, 1986m, 232 in Rich et al., 1993, p.110).

It should be noticed that gender in Greek philology is not used only as a representation of social and cultural ethics – through metaphors; instead, it is used in order to highlight the differences in the responses of individuals to various social and political challenges. In this context, gender has to be combined with other concepts – as freedom, politics, family and so on – in order to support the development of credible assumptions regarding the aspects of life of people of a particular historical period.

Aeschylus’ Oresteia can be characterized as a rather innovative work – in terms of the social issues developed. For this reason, Porter (2005) supported that ‘although Aeschylus Oresteia moves toward resolution on many fronts, there are significant counterpoints to these positive progressions; human stature and initiative decline over the course of the trilogy’ (Porter, 2005, p. 301). It is not made clear whether the role of gender for this differentiation in the responses of the dramatis personae is decisive; it seems that gender influences at a first level the reactions to specific events – developed throughout the Oresteia – however, it is not clear whether these reactions are depended only on gender or whether there are other factors also influencing the