Furor Frustrated: Policing Women’s Anger in the Pseudo-Senecan Octavia
By Mary Hamil Gilbert
Misogyny, as philosopher Kate Manne defines it, requires women to be the givers of what she terms “feminine-coded goods,” such as sex, love, and children, and to shun “masculine-coded perks,” like leadership, authority, and power. Its primary function within a patriarchal society is to punish women who renounce the role of perennial giver. Octavia seems to be just this sort of deviant woman at the beginning of her eponymous play. She refuses to provide Nero with sex, children, and affection out of anger at her brother’s untimely death (108-14, 287, 537).
Irata Puella: Gaslighting, Violence, and Anger in Elegy
By Ellen Cole Lee
The women of elegy are powerful, beautiful, and, often, angry. But why? In the elegiac poet-lover’s imagination, his mistress is usually outraged for one of three reasons (or all three, in the case of Propertius 3.23):
(1) she is jealous of her lover’s relationship with another woman (e.g., Tibullus 1.6)
(2) her lover has made her wait for his attentions (or his gifts) (e.g., Propertius 1.3, 2.29a)
(3) someone has been impugning her reputation (e.g., Propertius 1.4, 2.29a).
The Problem of the Angry Woman and Herodotus’ Use of Tragedy in Two Athenian Logoi
By Erika L. Weiberg
Two passages in Herodotus’ Histories stand out for their unusual representation of women, who act neither rationally nor in a way that preserves family or cultural norms (typical motivations for female agents in Herodotus: see Dewald, Gray, Blok). These are the Athenian women who murder the lone survivor of the Athenian expedition against Aegina (5.87) and the Athenian women who stone to death the wife and children of an Athenian man who advocated cooperating with Persia (9.5).
Putting Pressure on the Patriarchy: The Subversive Power of Women's Anger in Ancient Greek Literature and Magic
By Suzanne Lye
This paper explores women’s anger and its perceived efficacy in the ancient Greek imagination. From Demeter’s wrathful defection from Olympus in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter out of anger at the abduction of her daughter (Nickel 2003) to a magical binding spell from as late as the 3rd century C.E. (Pachoumi 2013: 313), women found effective expressions for rage, thus challenging the roles and behaviors impressed upon them by patriarchal power structures in their given societies.