THE VIRTUOUS CHARACTER OF WOMAN IN ARISTOTLE’S POETICS

Expuse este texto en inglés en octubre de 2019, con ocasión de la III European Liberal Arts and Core Texts Education Conference (“Caring for Souls: Can Core Texts Educate Character?”), celebrada en mi Universidad.

Hoy mi madre habría cumplido 81 años. Por ello publico en el blog este texto sobre la virtud de la mujer - vista desde la incorrecta postura de Aristóteles. Aun así, espero que estos párrafos muestren que su actitud es distinta en el caso de la Poética cuando debe considerar el caso de figuras como Antígona o Ifigenia.

That Aristotle’s judgment of women’s capabilities is not in line with current standards is well-known. This can easily be tested by reviewing certain passages in his Politics or his History of Animals. Politics (1254b13-16) on the difference between male and female is an emblematic example in this regard: 

So is it naturally with the male and the female; the one is superior, the other inferior; the one governs, the other is governed; and the same rule must necessarily hold good with respect to all mankind. 

ἔτι δὲ τὸ ἄρρεν πρὸς τὸ θῆλυ φύσει τὸ μὲν κρεῖττον τὸ δὲ χεῖρον, καὶ τὸ μὲν ἄρχον τὸ δ’ ἀρχόμενον. τὸν αὐτὸν δὲ τρόπον ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι καὶ ἐπὶ πάντων ἀνθρώπων. 

Two other Aristotelian passages cited frequently in relation to the topic of woman’s inferiority are to be found in Politics (1260a17-31) and the History of Animals (608b8-15). Both underline the existence of a natural dissimilitude between male and female and, in relation to human beings, man and woman. According to this passage from Politics (1260a17-23), Aristotle regarded women as capable only of a less elevated degree of virtue than men: 

He who is to govern ought to be perfect in moral virtue, for his business is entirely that of an architect, and reason is the architect; while others want only that portion of it which may be sufficient for their station; from whence it is evident, that although moral virtue is common to all those we have spoken of, yet the temperance of a man and a woman are not the same, nor their courage, nor their justice, though Socrates thought otherwise; for the courage of the man consists in commanding, the woman’s in obeying; and the same is true in other particulars. 

τὸν μὲν ἄρχοντα τελέαν ἔχειν δεῖ τὴν ἠθικὴν ἀρετήν (…), τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἕκαστον ὅσον ἐπιβάλλει αὐτοῖς. ὥστε φανερὸν ὅτι ἔστιν ἠθικὴ ἀρετὴ τῶν εἰρημένων πάντων, καὶ οὐχ ἡ αὐτὴ σωφροσύνη γυναικὸς καὶ ἀνδρός, οὐδ’ ἀνδρεία καὶ δικαιοσύνη, καθάπερ ᾤετο Σωκράτης, ἀλλ’ ἡ μὲν ἀρχικὴ ἀνδρεία ἡ δ’ ὑπηρετική, ὁμοίως δ’ ἔχει καὶ περὶ τὰς ἄλλας. 

A passage in the fifteenth chapter (1454a16-24) of Aristotle’s Poetics relates to the texts referenced above, especially the second one. In beginning to speak about ‘character’ as a necessary qualitative element of tragedy, Aristotle identifies four properties which dramatic characters must show: “Regarding characters, there are four things at which should aim” (Περὶ δὲ τὰ ἤθη τέτταρά ἐστιν ὧν δεῖ στοχάζεσθαι). His treatment of the first two is of interest for this presentation. Aristotle begins by speaking (1454a16-22) about the ‘goodness’ of tragic characters: 

First and foremost, the characters should be good. will have character if, as we said, the speech or the action makes obvious a decision of whatever sort; it will have a good character, if it makes obvious a good decision. can exist in every class ; for a woman can be good, and a slave can, although the first of these may be inferior and the second wholly worthless. 

 Περὶ δὲ τὰ ἤθη τέτταρά ἐστιν ὧν δεῖ στοχάζεσθαι, ἓν μὲν καὶ πρῶτον, ὅπως χρηστὰ ᾖ. ἕξει δὲ ἦθος μὲν ἐὰν ὥσπερ ἐλέχθη ποιῇ φανερὸν ὁ λόγος ἢ ἡ πρᾶξις προαίρεσίν τινα <ἥ τις ἂν> ᾖ, χρηστὸν δὲ ἐὰν χρηστήν. ἔστιν δὲ ἐν ἑκάστῳ γένει· καὶ γὰρ γυνή ἐστιν χρηστὴ καὶ δοῦλος, καίτοι γε ἴσως τούτων τὸ μὲν χεῖρον, τὸ δὲ ὅλως φαῦλόν ἐστιν. 

Aristotle concedes that every class of person can be good, even when, as may be the case in Greek tragedy, the person is a woman or a slave. But he reminds his readers that woman is ‘worse’ or ‘inferior’, by implicit comparison to man. Moreover, the latter kind of character, the slave, is, according to ancient concepts and the translation cited here, “wholly worthless”; Aristotle’s account of the virtue of a slave in Politics (1260a33-36), after the above-cited passage relating to women is worth recalling at this point: 

In like manner the virtue of a slave is to be referred to his master; for we laid it down as a maxim, that the use of a slave was to employ him in what you wanted; so that it is clear enough that few virtues are wanted in his station, only that he may not neglect his work through idleness or fear. 

ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ δούλου πρὸς δεσπότην. ἔθεμεν δὲ πρὸς τἀναγκαῖα χρήσιμον εἶναι τὸν δοῦλον, ὥστε δῆλον ὅτι καὶ ἀρετῆς δεῖται μικρᾶς, καὶ τοσαύτης ὅπως μήτε δι’ ἀκολασίαν μήτε διὰ δειλίαν ἐλλείψῃ τῶν ἔργων. 

The second requirement in the Poetics (1454a23) refers to appropriateness of character. Here Aristotle introduces a significant restriction. The brave or ‘manly’ character exists, this is a kind of personality which may be found in tragedy, and it may also exist in the case of women. The question is how appropriate it is for a woman to be brave; to Aristotle’s mind, this is not the case if her character is too ‘manly’ or ‘clever’: 

Second, appropriate. It is possible to be manly in character, but it is not appropriate for a woman to be so manly or clever. 

δεύτερον δὲ τὸ ἁρμόττοντα· ἔστιν γὰρ ἀνδρεῖον μὲν τὸ ἦθος, ἀλλ᾽ οὐχ ἁρμόττον γυναικὶ οὕτως ἀνδρείαν ἢ δεινὴν εἶναι. 

It should be noted that in this sentence the philosopher may be getting into trouble with etymology. The noun ἀνδρεία and the cognate adjective ἀνδρεῖος refer in Greek, in ethical contexts, to the cardinal virtue of fortitude. But both terms proceed from the word for ‘man’, ἀνήρ. Therefore, their first meanings are respectively ‘manhood’ and ‘manly’, and it must have seemed paradoxical to a Greek speaker to say that a woman is characterised by her fortitude, that is, by her ‘manhood’. Moreover, Aristotle cannot theoretically accept that a woman may be distinguished by a ‘braveness’ or ‘fortitude’ comparable to that of a man, as he says explicitly in the second passage cited from his Politics (1260a17-23). The question then is if Aristotle says the same in his Poetics and his other works. I think there are important, albeit subtle, differences. 

First, in 1454a19-22, he concedes that a woman can be relatively ‘good’ (χρηστή), which is different from the statements included in the Politics and the History of Animals. Neither of those two works contains a positive assessment of women. On the contrary, their inferiority is negatively underlined once and again. 

On the other hand, the peculiarity of the adjective the philosopher uses to speak about feminine goodness in the Poetics should also be considered. This adjective is χρηστή, the feminine form of χρηστός, which strictly speaking means ‘useful’, and secondarily ‘good of its sort’, and therefore ‘good’. The term has no specific force in comparison with other adjectives used in the Poetics in relation to good characters, such as σπουδαῖος (“good”, in the sense of “earnest”) or ἐπιεικής (“decent”). Therefore, it makes sense to use this neutral word, χρηστή, if Aristotle’s intention is to concede the goodness of a woman who plays a role in a tragedy, though not to highlight it, as this would have run counter to his misogynistic statements in other treatises. This is particularly true insofar as he combines reference to woman and slave: that a slave is χρηστός, “good”, might have been acceptable but it would have been surprising for a Greek to affirm that he is σπουδαῖος, “earnest”. 

Moving on to the second part of the Aristotelian text (Poetics 1454a23), in which he declares that the characters must be appropriate, Aristotle states that “it is possible to be manly in character, but it is not appropriate for a woman to be so manly or clever”. By speaking in such terms, Aristotle is positively conceding something which is not to be found in his other works, in which he refers only to the inferiority of women. 

This is a good reason to maintain the Greek text as it has been transmitted by the manuscripts and not emend it, changing ἔστιν γὰρ ἀνδρεῖον μὲν τὸ ἦθος (“it is possible to be manly in character”) to ἔστιν γὰρ ἀνδρείαν μὲν τὸ ἦθος (“it is possible for a woman to be manly”) as proposed by Kassel. In my opinion, the idea that a woman can participate in a manly human character, although not to a prominent degree, is consonant with Aristotelian thought. However, I do not think that other texts of the Aristotelian corpus enable the affirmative conclusion that “it is possible for a woman to be manly”, ἔστιν γὰρ ἀνδρείαν μὲν τὸ ἦθος. 

If there are these subtle differences in the way Aristotle speaks about the virtue of woman in the Poetics and his other works, the question then is why such discrepancy arises. What he says in the Poetics is in accordance with his assertions in other writings, and this can be understood as a question of internal coherence. But Aristotle’s empirical, scientific approach obliges him to consider in the Poetics the factual evidence of Greek tragedies, in which the virtuous character of heroines such as Antigone or Iphigenia cannot be denied, not to mention the ‘manly’ character of Medeia in her own Euripidean tragedy. 

It is true that Aristotle discovers defects in these tragic women, as he explains also in the fifteenth chapter, when he speaks about the need for consistency and internal coherence of character (1454a26-28): 

Fourth, the character consistent. If the model for the representation is somebody inconsistent, and such a character is intended, even so it should be consistently inconsistent. 

τέταρτον δὲ τὸ ὁμαλόν. κἂν γὰρ ἀνώμαλός τις ᾖ ὁ τὴν μίμησιν παρέχων καὶ τοιοῦτον ἦθος ὑποτεθῇ, ὅμως ὁμαλῶς ἀνώμαλον δεῖ εἶναι. 

Aristotle provides several examples of defective consistency of character, the most radical of which is Iphigenia in Aulis, in the Euripidean tragedy of the same name (1454a32-33): 

An example of (…) the inconsistent, the Iphigeneia at Aulis (the girl who begs does not seem at all like the later Iphigeneia). 

ἔστιν δὲ παράδειγμα (…) τοῦ δὲ ἀνωμάλου ἡ ἐν Αὐλίδι Ἰφιγένεια· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἔοικεν ἡ ἱκετεύουσα τῇ ὑστέρᾳ. 

In conclusion, it can be said that Aristotle’s references to women in his Poetics are basically in accordance with the statements included in his other works: a woman is inferior to a man, also in relation to virtue. Notwithstanding this, there is a subtle nuance in the case of the treatise analysed here: in speaking about tragic women as portrayed in the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides, Aristotle must take into account this factual evidence and concede that these female characters may be relatively virtuous and participate, for example, in a cardinal virtue like fortitude – in spite of being, of course, according to Aristotle, inferior to men. 

In the second chapter of the Poetics (1448a1-18) Aristotle declares that characters in serious genres such as epic and tragedy are better than us. And in the fifteenth chapter, the core of our analysis, he states that: “tragedy is a representation of people who are better than we are” (μίμησίς ἐστιν ἡ τραγῳδία βελτιόνων ἢ ἡμεῖς, 1454b8-9). This must also apply to tragic women. Although the philosopher does not speak in these terms about any specific woman in the Poetics, he must have known and acknowledged that women like Antigone or Iphigenia are good moral models in their respective tragedies; and, moreover, that these women are morally superior to their male antagonists, Creon or Agamemnon. Characters such as Antigone and Iphigenia were paradigms of humanity in classical Antiquity as they continue to be today. 

BYWATER, I. (ed. and tr.), Aristotle on the Art of Poetry. A Revised Text with Critical Introduction, Translation, and Commentary, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1909. 

JANKO, R. (tr.), Aristotle. Poetics I with the Tractatus Coislinianus, a Hypothetical Reconstruction of Poetics II, the Fragments of the On Poets, Indianapolis, Hackett, 1987. 

KASSEL, R. (ed.), Aristotelis de arte poetica liber, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1965. 

LUCAS, W.D. (ed.), Aristotle. Poetics, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1968. 

TARÁN, L., and GUTAS, D. (eds.), Aristotle. Poetics. Editio Maior of the Greek Text with Historical Introductions and Philological Commentaries, Leiden, Brill, 2012.

José B. Torres Guerra