| Abstract: | After considering what is said about women and analyzing their individual characterizations, one question remains: are these Plautine women representative of the Roman ideal? The Roman ideal for womanhood, as established in the introduction, calls for very specific behavior. A woman was to be loyal, meek, faithful, chaste, honest, and, above all, obedient (Cf. Williams, 25; Pearce, 20); all the qualities Alcumena claims for herself. Where are hese women in Plautine comedy? In their place Plautus substitutes women with entirely different qualities. Plautine women are strong, intelligent, independent, clever, shrewd in financial matters, and powerful. Above all, they are not obedient. Even Alcumena, who claims to be the ideal wife, could hardly be called obedient or meek; her behavior when suspected of adultery by her husband is not conciliatory, but conviction in her version of the situation. The answer to the question, "where are these ideal women in Plautine comedy?", is that they are not present. The women of Plautine comedy are not representative of the Roman ideal. In the dialogue of Plautus, men and women say some pretty awful things about women. Women are bossy, nagging, selfish, sexually demanding, greedy, bitchy and merciless. The characters of Plautine comedy obviously view the women of Plautus as less than ideal. The actual characterizations of women also reveal they are not ideal Roman women, but instead of that being a negative fact, these Plautine women are positively admirable characters for different abilities and qualities than obedience and meekness. |
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