Women & Power - Parallels Between the Classical World and the 21st Century

(Mary Beard and Sarah Churchwell: Women & Power. Video taken from London Review Bookshop's YouTube channel)

“But in every way, the shared metaphors we use of female access to power - 'knocking on the door', 'storming the citadel', 'smashing the glass ceiling', or just giving them a 'leg up' - underline female exteriority. Women in power are seen as breaking down barriers, or alternatively as taking something to which they are not quite entitled.”

Women & Power is a quaint manifesto of about 115 pages, based on two lectures given by its author, Mary Beard. I first picked it up during my stay in London last year while visiting the British Museum, where I spent at least half of my visit contemplating between books with a budget of about seven quid. I ended up picking it because it would be the lightest, and therefore would cause me the least danger to pay extra for an overweight suitcase (which I had not, thank goodness.) I paid little to no attention to the synopsis on the back, and hurried to pay for it before my best friend would yell at me for taking too long in the bookshop.

When I got to reading it about a week ago, I was pleasantly surprised. Apparently, besides being an enthusiastic feminist, Mary Beard is also an expert in classics. And let me tell you, as a woman who's always been fascinated with the ancient world - and also spent quite a while studying it - I rushed to grab a pen and ruler and dive into that truly delightful book. Mary Beard used ancient Rome and Greece to relate to today’s feminist issues, providing examples from art, literature and politics. She explores the relationship of humanity to power, our unconscious idea of it and how women fit into that structure - that was so specifically tailored for men. As Beard brilliantly said, “You cannot easily fit women into a structure that is already coded as male; you have to change the structure.”

Take, for example, Margaret Thatcher. Put whatever opinion you have on the women aside for the sake of observing a particular case Beard raised, revolving Thatcher: As many Britons noticed, the previous Tory leader had changed her voice completely sometime during the 1970’s. She dropped her pitch by a few octaves, adapting a deep and husky tone, in order to sound more assertive and authoritative. Because of course, how excruciatingly hard would it be to get the public to follow a female voice, when it does not fit their idea of power? Even though I consider myself aware of the patriarchy’s influence on women and all the different ways it makes us change ourselves, even I drop my usual high pitch when I seek respect. I do so deliberately, not brave enough to challenge my environment and see if they’d listen the same, even if I don’t fit their idea of an assertive voice.

Women often think they’ve cracked the code when they lower their voices, masculinise their clothes and generally adapt themselves to the existing idea of power in order to be taken more seriously. The truth is, as Beard expresses, that this act is merely the avoidance of getting to the bottom of a deep rooted issue. They play along to the structure, seemingly “taking advantage of it”, but in reality are only confronting men's idea of what power should look like. To “fool” men with compliance to their standard is not a feminist act, for that it changes nothing in favour of women, instead reassuring men that their manliness is still favourable, their traits the only one desirable for fields where power is needed.

Beard provides examples of countless times in ancient Greece and Rome where women have been belittled, silenced or ridiculed. From Telemachus’ demand of his mother’s silence to Philomela’s tongue cut out to prevent her speaking of her rape, women in Western culture have been silenced since the dawn of time, and that practise precisely contributed to their exclusion from power. Mary Beard walks us through her manifesto using numerous case studies chosen with care, applying the devastating parallels she noticed between the ancient world and the so-called “progressive” modern one, encouraging women to take up space and be loud, on our own terms. To exist as powerful creatures not only in the mould of power made for men: to preach using our own voice and not a deepened one, to realise that power and femininity do not need to contradict one another.

I hope I’ll never masculinise myself again for the convenience of others.

I would recommend it if you enjoy: Feminist theory, history, ancient literature, art and quick reads.

Overall Marianne Rating: 9\10

Loudly,

Marianne

(P.S: Don’t think I am not aware of all the scandals following Mary Beard regarding white feminism. Perhaps my next article will be about that exactly: white feminism and the disastrous obstacle it is on feminism’s journey to achieve true intersectionality. For now, I’ll appreciate the light she shed on Western women’s relationship with power, and remember that while this manifesto makes some incredible points - it also fails to acknowledge a huge aspect in the issue it discusses, that is the relationship of women of colour with power.)