Female Mobility and Gendered Space in Ancient Greek Myth by Ariadne Konstantinou

Abstract

Reviewed by: Female Mobility and Gendered Space in Ancient Greek Myth by Ariadne Konstantinou Kate Gilhuly Ariadne Konstantinou. Female Mobility and Gendered Space in Ancient Greek Myth. Bloomsbury Classical Studies Monographs. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2018. Pp. xiii, 189. $102.00. ISBN 978-1-4742-5676-6. In this monograph, Ariadne Konstantinou initiates a discussion about gender and mobility, building on the spatial turn in Greek literary analysis. She interprets passages where females in myth are represented as moving through space, exploring what their mobility can tell us about gender ideology. Returning to Vernant’s reading of the immovable Hestia, she preserves the structuralist model of thinking about gods (and mortals) as part of a larger system in which meaning is defined through relationships; but she responds to criticism of this approach by paying close attention to individual articulations in texts, considering the historical context in which these representations were produced. The strength of this approach is that it points to a wide array of modes of female mobility in a variety of contexts; and yet her conclusions would be enhanced by a more sophisticated engagement with gender theory. The book is divided into two parts, the first treating goddesses in archaic representations and the second looking at heroines in predominantly fifth-century Athenian texts. Chapter 1 explores the mobility of the three virgin goddesses, [End Page 232] Hestia, Athena, and Artemis as represented in archaic literature. Konstantinou notes that Hestia has a centering and static relationship to space, while Artemis roams the mountainous spaces of the hunt, and Athena flies in a chariot, concluding that divine virginity does not entail immobility or seclusion. The second chapter then examines Homeric depictions of the mobility of Olympian wives and mothers. Again, Konstantinou notes a plurality of female mobilities: Aphrodite travels for the purpose of seduction, Demeter roams the earth in search of Persephone, and Hera at times sends others on errands, not as a reflection of limited mobility, but rather as an effect of her status among the gods. Because epic poetry represents a spectrum of female mobility, Konstantinou determines that the mobility of goddesses is more reflective of their divinity than their gender. This conclusion misses the opportunity to illuminate a more nuanced perception of gender where a range of feminine, or unfeminine, behaviors, is given spatiality through images of movement: so, e.g., Athena’s driving Hera in a chariot to war characterizes Athena as a masculine goddess, and Hera’s gender as less transgressive. Wherever gender is represented, the ideology of gender is being communicated. The various types of travel that Konstantinou considers contribute to the depiction of different instantiations of femininity. Chapter 3 in part 2 focuses on Io and the Danaids in Prometheus Bound and the Supplices. It introduces the distinction between images of centrifugal and centripetal movement, as females move as brides from father’s to husband’s house and to and from Egypt. Konstantinou suggests that the Danaids’ movement into Argos is depicted as a return to homeland, and raises the interesting possibility that this centripetal travel may be read as a bid to become part of “to hellenikon.” Chapter 4 turns to the mobility of maenads and huntresses, with a compelling reading of space in Euripides’ Bacchae. Konstantinou notes the blurring of distinctions between city and mountain, the ritual gendering of the mountain space, and the personification of Thebes as maenad as the result of the Dionysiac experience. The analysis of the two groups of maenads suggests that the purpose of the sub-groups of maenads might reflect female mobility as women leave their houses to participate in ritual, so that Euripides’ text simultaneously reflects myth and ritual practice. Konstantinou then turns to images of the huntress in tragedy, noting that these depictions are more concerned with the space of the hunt than its practice, which highlights a gender discrepancy. Chapter 5 introduces the feminist image of the glass wall to describe the limits of female mobility in the Greek mythic imagination. Women move out and “beyond,” but never into a public or political space. Here Konstantinou relates her study to contemporary feminist discourse, observing that mobility needs to be accompanied by...