BMCR 2009.05.34: Emde Boas on Chong-Gossard, On Gender and Communication in Euripides' Plays: Between Song and Silence. Mnemosyne: Supplements; 296

J. H. Kim On Chong-Gossard, On Gender and Communication in Euripides'
Plays: Between Song and Silence. Mnemosyne: Supplements; 296.
Leiden/Boston:  Brill, 2008.  Pp. 263.  ISBN 9789004168800.  $142.00.

Reviewed by Evert van Emde Boas, Corpus Christi College, Oxford
([email protected])
Word count:  1954 words
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Gender, communication, Euripides, song and silence: the title of
Chong-Gossard's book has the virtue of highlighting precisely the key
terms and concepts of his work. In a largely successful endeavour,
Chong-Gossard attempts to show what it is that -- in the case of
Euripides -- characters communicate by singing or by being silent, and
how Euripidean men and women differ in this respect. The book is the
eventual product of Chong-Gossard's 1999 dissertation, written in
Michigan under the auspices of Ruth Scodel. A few of the better
sections have appeared elsewhere in article-form,[[1]] which is not to
say that the remaining material is merely inferior padding (it isn't).
Though most obviously valuable as a contribution to the fast-growing
field of study into gender-specific language in Greek tragedy, the
work's real achievement is that it invites a reconsideration of what
actors' song expresses in Euripides (on silences, readers will find
less that is 'new').

The book falls roughly into two parts (song and silence) of two
chapters each, preceded by an introduction, and followed by a single
briefer chapter and a conclusion. The introduction (1-24) offers, apart
from a cursory status quaestionis,[[2]] a methodological framework for
the rest of the book. Here, Chong-Gossard makes much of the term
'space', going so far as to say that "the basis of [the book's] inquiry
is a definition of space as communication" (21): the idea is that
whenever people talk to each other they create a 'space' that connects
them, which can be 'gendered' if one sex is excluded from the
conversation (e.g. when a woman confides a secret to a female chorus).
Disproportionate emphasis is placed on this concept, however: it
becomes useful as a way of looking at tragic conversation really only
in the last chapter, and Chong-Gossard is occupied for much of the book
with communication between men and women, rather than the
gender-exclusive conversations which he stresses initially.

The introduction, then, is oddly irrelevant for chapters 2 ('Song as
Knowledge: Recognition Duets', 25-63) and 3 ('Why Am I Singing?
Resistance and Other Semantics of Lyric', 65-112); yet it is here that
the true meat of the book is found.  Chong-Gossard's core argument is
that the way in which female song has traditionally been interpreted by
scholars (as a highly emotional form of expression) is insufficient. He
proposes that we move "beyond standard analyses that equate female
lyric with exaggerated emotion," (3) and instead focus on "what lyric
accomplishes, or what purpose it serves in the dramatic situations"
(35). The questions that we should ask, according to Chong-Gossard, are
"what does a Euripidean woman communicate when she sings?", and "how do
Euripidean men's songs differ in what they communicate and when they
occur?" (111). This is a worthy project, and Chong-Gossard does an
admirable job of answering his own questions.

Chapter 2 is concerned with the epirrhematic 'recognition duets' of IT,
Hel., Ion, Hyps., and Soph. El.. In the case of the Euripidean plays,
Chong-Gossard convincingly argues that the traditional view contrasting
an irrational, emotional female (singing lyrics) with a rational,
restrained male (speaking trimeters) is defective: rather, according to
Chong-Gossard, lyric should be seen as a mode of expression which
allows women to communicate private knowledge about their past physical
experiences (rape, abduction, etc.) to men in a persuasive fashion. In
the case of Hel.,[[3]] for example, Helen's lyrics explain her private
history to Menelaus, who needs to be convinced of her chastity before
their eventual mutual rescue can be accomplished; similarly, Creusa
must share with Ion the story of her rape in order to convince him of
his divine parentage (Chong-Gossard has good remarks on p. 69 on the
differences between Creusa's two lyrical narrations of the rape).

In the third chapter, Chong-Gossard adds three further 'semantics' of
female lyric: 'resistance' (e.g. Electra's monody and  amoibaion with
the chorus in Eur. El., Hypsipyle's exchange with the chorus of Hyps.),
'transition' (Hecuba at Hec. 683-723 and Hermione at Andr. 825-65), and
'interrogation' (e.g. Hecuba at Tro. 235-92, Antigone in the
teichoscopia at Pho. 88-201). 'Transition' seems to me hardly to
qualify as a 'semantic' (Chong-Gossard is perhaps making too much of
the fact that Hecuba and Hermione sing at moments of transition in the
plays), but Chong-Gossard otherwise consistently provides useful
insights into what women's song 'does' in these various plays. He ends
with a section on male lyrics, arguing that men's song expresses a
"crisis or condition that is potentially 'demasculinizing' for them"
(112), such as excessive grief (exemplified by Amphitryon in HF,
Theseus in Hipp.).

All in all, these two chapters offer a useful lens through which to
look at male and female actors' lyric in Euripides, though I am not
instantly convinced by Chong-Gossard's claim that all lyrical passages
not discussed in the book could "easily be fit into the new paradigm
suggested" (111). Choral lyric, as announced in Chong-Gossard's
introduction (22-3), is also left entirely undiscussed, and it is a
shame that Chong-Gossard gives no indication if he sees any
similarities between the lyric voices of actors and choruses. But these
are the gripes of a reviewer who trusts that this author would have
very useful things to say on those points as well.

The next two chapters (ch. 3, 'Silence I: Gendered Categories',
113-154; ch. 4, 'Silence II: Solidarity and Complicity', 155-203) deal
with a phenomenon which has received much attention in the past few
years, and Chong-Gossard rightly mentions that much of what he says
overlaps with the recent work on silence of (among others) Montiglio
and Stockert.[[4]] Chong-Gossard deals, broadly speaking, with three
categories of 'silence': first, the actual non-speaking kind, of
characters whose first words come more than a hundred lines after their
first appearance (sometimes called 'Aeschylean silence'). Though
Aeschylus' Cassandra is the obvious prototype, the Euripidean examples
are all male: Adrastus in Supp., Orestes in his name-play, and
Menoeceus in Pho.. Chong-Gossard points out that unlike 'silent'
Euripidean women, these male characters are not deliberately
withholding personal secrets or vital information; instead,
Chong-Gossard argues, they are silent only "until Euripides has
provided the proper 'moment'" for them to utter important speeches
(117). This is no doubt true, but should not obscure the dramatic
significance of these silences: Adrastus is temporarily mute because it
underlines his status as grieving suppliant, Orestes because it marks
his troubled sleep, Cassandra's silence expresses her noble resistance
to Clytemnestra (Chong-Gossard is not unaware of these aspects, but
gives them little weight). The second type of silence (as marked by the
Greek terms <greek>SIGH/, SIGA/W, SIWPH/, SIWPA/W</greek>) is not
characterized by lack of speech, but by the deliberate refusal to give
up a certain piece of information: Chong-Gossard here gives thoughtful
readings of Phaedra and Creusa, and the social constraints which compel
them to keep their dark and personal secrets concealed. Such torturous
secrets of women are then contrasted with the ruses of men, who on
occasion wish to keep knowledge hidden until a politically appropriate
time (e.g. Xuthus in Ion, Agamemnon in IT). Chong-Gossard's third kind
of silence (covered in chapter 4) is that of female choruses (in Med.,
Hipp., IT., Hel., Ion, and IA) who keep secrets for others (or, in the
case of the chorus in Ion, let the cat out of the bag), and that of two
virgins (Hippolytus and Theonoe) who take an oath not to reveal a
secret. As for the female choruses, Chong-Gossard shows that female
solidarity is the all-powerful factor driving the behaviour of fellow
captives, neighbours, etc., an impulse stronger than the social control
of 'good gossip' which women might be expected to exert on each other.
Chong-Gossard's discussion of Hippolytus and Theonoe, which rounds off
the chapter, includes interesting observations on the different
implications of male and female virginity.

The final chapter ('Women Out of Place', 205-40) deals with Euripidean
women who intrude upon a 'male space', where they are not expected to
speak. Some of these women (notably 'Macaria' in Heracl. and Aethra in
Supp.) explicitly apologize for speaking: Chong-Gossard neatly analyzes
these apologies as both necessary pro forma pleas for the forbearance
of men, and rhetorical devices providing their words with legitimacy.
The situation is entirely different in the case of Evadne in Supp. and
Clytemnestra and Iphigenia in IA: the awkwardness of these women's
presence in a male environment is, according to Chong-Gossard,
deliberately thematized by Euripides. In the case of Evadne,
Chong-Gossard details how her extraneousness leads to all kinds of
confusion on the part of her father Iphis; in the case of Iphigenia and
Clytemnestra, Chong-Gossard discusses the constant renegotiation of
female propriety which these women have to do in the Greek camp.

It is worth mentioning a few general merits of Chong-Gossard's book.
First, more than other works on gender-specific language in tragedy I
have seen, Chong-Gossard is consistently attuned to differences between
the three tragedians in their treatment of women and gendered speech.
That women in Euripides are portrayed differently than their Aeschylean
and Sophoclean counterparts is well-established, but Chong-Gossard
offers many nuanced observations on how these distinctions affect the
language of Euripides' characters (e.g. at 54-7, 104-5, 107, 114 n.4,
153, 201-2). Chong-Gossard is also careful not to treat the entire
Euripidean oeuvre as a monolith, but makes allowances for developments
in Euripides' career and other differences between his plays (e.g. at
110, 142, 180). Secondly, Chong-Gossard pays ample attention to
fragmentary plays: Hypsipyle in particular receives a full treatment
(51-4, 96-8), but there are also discussions of Antiope (105-6),
Cretans (148-9) and other lost plays. Finally, Chong-Gossard devotes a
good amount of space to discussions of Euripidean men (scholars working
on language conditioned by gender sometimes seem to forget that there
are two).

I have some complaints as well, apart from such unavoidable differences
over the interpretation of individual scenes and plays as any reader
will have (I find myself in the minority, for example, which thinks
that the Euripidean Electra -- treated very harshly by Chong-Gossard --
should be given a bit of a break by scholars; see Cropp's commentary
(Warminster, 1988) for some needed nuance). Many of the problems can be
summed up by a general feeling that the book is an erstwhile
dissertation which still needed one more 'pass' of revision and
tightening. I have already mentioned above that the introduction does
not seem entirely integrated with the rest of the book. Chong-Gossard
can also be frustratingly repetitive, literally copying whole sentences
three or four times, and his liberal quotations of other scholars are
not always to the point. Finally, Chong-Gossard can take his claims too
far (at least for this reviewer): we read too often that certain things
"cannot be communicated in mere trimeters", and there are several
places where song is said to 'mean' more than I think it can (for
example at 103, where Chong-Gossard claims that Antigone's lyric in
Pho. "is indicative ... of her youthful incapacity to recognize the
approaching forces for the disaster they are."

The book has also not been produced without imperfections: a number of
mistakes have escaped the prying eyes of proofreaders, and there is an
annoying inconsistency in the printing of transliterated and/or
untransliterated Greek.[[5]]

In spite of these misgivings, the book should become required reading
for anyone working on gender-specific communication in Greek tragedy.
It is to be hoped that it will find a wider readership as well,
especially those interested in what it means for an actor to sing in
Euripides. The unqualified equation of lyric with emotion, for all its
popularity and digestibility, is restrictive and ignores a whole range
of communicative functions performed by actors' song. For those looking
to gain a fuller understanding of those functions, Chong-Gossard has
provided a good place to start.

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Notes:


1.   'Song and the Solitary Self: Euripidean women who resist comfort',
Phoenix 57 (2003) 209-231; 'The Silence of the Virgins: comparing
Euripides' Hippolytus and Theonoe', Antichthon 38 (2004) 10-30; 'Female
Song and Female Knowledge in the Recognition Duets of Euripides', Greek
Drama III: Essays in Honour of Kevin Lee (London, 2006) 27-48.

2.   In Chong-Gossard's survey of literature on gender-specific
language, I missed the important contribution of A. Willi, The
Languages of Aristophanes (Oxford, 2003) ch. 6 (also absent from the
bibliography).

3.   Chong-Gossard does not always engage convincingly (for my taste)
with linguistic and textual issues. He includes a sizeable footnote on
the problems of Hel. 625-97 (43 n. 29), but fails to mention that the
choices an editor makes here have real consequences for his argument.
(Incidentally, the autobiographical nature of female lyric identified
by Chong-Gossard should, in my view, settle the attribution of Hel.
638-40 (clearly Helen's), and if we indeed let go of the traditional
division between the emotional female and the rational male, editors
(and Chong-Gossard!) should think twice before taking Hel. 654-5 from
Menelaus, or IT 832-3 from Orestes.) I do not see what is relevant
about the textual issues mentioned at 44, 198 n. 33 and 199 n. 35.

4.   S. Montiglio, Silence in the Land of Logos (Princeton, 2000); W.
Stockert, 'Zum Schweigen in den Tragoedien des Euripides', in A.
Timonen et al. (eds.), The Language of Silence, vol. 2 (Vammala, 2004)
35-47.

5.   The translation "Why did you mean by that?" on p. 100 surely
cannot be right, and also on p. 162 something seems to have gone wrong
in the translation. On p. 151, read "Creusa" for "Cresua"; on p. 162,
"those same experiences make" for "those same experience makes"; on p.
163, delete the comma after "women of Corinth sang" and read "seriously
limited" for "serious limited"; on p. 183 n. 10, read "section" for
"chapter"; on p. 213 "Evadne" for "Evande"; on p. 245 n. 2, "Schlegels"
for "Schelgels". I also suspect that Chong-Gossard meant Hermione when
he names "Andromache" on p. 111. Longer Greek quotations are printed in
Greek alphabet, while Greek cited in the body text and footnotes is
usually transliterated (why?), but there are deviations at 17 n. 24,
18, 20, 110, 115 n. 6, 155, 165 n. 4, 225, 229 n.32, and probably at
other places I have missed.