seneca2008 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 25, 2019 1:37 am
We don't know what kind of man she's imagining who sets her heart aflutter but from this point we know that her wedding isn't just for propriety's sake. There is love, or at the very least puppy love, at stake too. I think the reader can't help imagining the 'meet cute' once we know this. Whether she expects to meet the tall dark handsome stranger on her trip to the pools or not, her dream seems to have spurred her into a state of wanting to be ready for such a meeting if it comes.
I don’t want to make myself unpopular by always questioning what I regard as blatant projection onto poor Homer’s text but this seems to be importing Mills and Boon in a wholly inappropriate way. I thought mwh’s post was a joke. Clearly I am missing something.
I thought this might get your goat.
But look! Now we have two interpretations we can profitably compare in order to interrogate your use of 'projection'.
seneca2008 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 25, 2019 1:37 am
I find the whole of this episode disturbingly funny. It seems to me to be a parody of male heroic action. Men travel in chariots but women use a wagon. Men fight wars while women spin and do the washing. When Priam visits Achilles in Iliad 24 he takes a wagon but travels himself in a chariot.
I take your point, but I don't see that this intertextual parody exists except in the broadest sense. There doesn't seem to be any direct parody of the language used of chariots and battle when the mules and wagons are discussed. They seem to be treated quite matter-of-factly as a means to an end. In what way is Homer evoking this parallel unless we bring our own 21st century mores to the table to force the comparison? If this is parody then Homer is no Aristophanes.
What do you suppose is the object of the parody - women themselves or the inequality between men and women? The latter seems like a stretch but then the former seems unfair in this context.
seneca2008 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 25, 2019 1:37 am
I think this episode from the Odyssey reveals a lot about the status of elite women.
This sentence needs considerable unpacking. Reveals - to whom, by what mechanism, to what end, deliberately or incidentally? Status - do you simply mean 'their lot' or something more? Elite women - Phaeacian elite women? 'Greek' elite women? Elite women throughout history?
seneca2008 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 25, 2019 1:37 am
Romantic love doesn’t seem to figure at all... You can be sure that poor old Nausicaa will be married to whoever makes the best offer to Alcinous, whoever maximises his τιμή.
"What you call love was invented by guys like me" - I just don't buy that your parents exerting control over your marriage precludes love, infatuation, adoration, and that these things have only been possible since 1962 or whatever time limit you want to put on it.
This is not to say that to exist in a society where you are subjected to structural inequality and your parents exert significant control over who you marry has no effect on how you feel - we've all read our Greer and de Beauvoir - but to suggest that we can only love someone that we have had complete freedom to choose (what does this even mean?) is just a misunderstanding of human behaviour. I exist in a society where many parents have strong opinions about who their children marry - no socialists please, you can only marry a doctor or a lawyer - which influence their children's decisions because they want to avoid falling out with their parents. It doesn't stop them loving a person who meets their parents' approval.
Whether greater freedom to choose who we marry leads to more loving marriages in every case - now there's a question!
It is important to understand that pressures on women (and men) in terms of who they marry exist on a spectrum (or more likely some kind of 4 dimensional plane) from shotgun wedding to 'I like him but my dad expressed a dislike for men with beards 10 years ago'. To cleanly separate
our society from this
other society is to turn this spectrum into a distinction. For a full exploration, written by a woman, of the interaction between the 'gilded cage' and genuine feelings of love and affection in a court where marriages are carefully arranged, I refer you to La Princesse de Clèves. See also Sarah Pomeroy's comments on Book 6 lines 270-385 in the previous thread.
Although perhaps you consider all sex before the 60s to be rape or joyless procreation, in which case we can start a new thread about the Wife of Bath's tale or Margery Kempe.
Edit: to be clear, no goat-getting was deliberately sought and no heffalump traps were laid - I genuinely think my sugar-coated reading is defensible