Aspasi Most Influential And Controversial Female Of Classic Greek History

Aspasia; Most Influential and Controversial Female of Classic Greek History Rhetoric is an art, that has been around for as long as women have. Any language that is purposely used to persuade an audience is referred to as rhetoric. This essay will be composed of the ways Aspasia’s life created many opportunities for herself but she later lost them due to gender discrimination and how her influences were frowned upon. She built her image of respect from some of the most famous male rhetoricians from this era. Women rhetoricians had to make the extra effort to put forth their art of rhetoric by out ruling the usual stereotypes of women remaining out of the public’s view due to ignorance and their lack of respect. Aspasia could define all women’s

(Jobe and Welch) “As part of the feminist challenge to the history of rhetoric, I want to reconstruct and refigure a woman whose texts, life, and manuscripts have been annexed by men, said Aspasia. (Glenn) This shows her attitude and overall goal for herself and other women to be given the equal opportunity to prove their intelligence. According to Jobe and Welch, within her lifetime, she collaborated with many men and women, and taught some of the most powerful and intelligent people of this era, 5th century BCE. This created a very controversial issue with her name because of her relations. Women were not supposed to be out in public or allowed to practice arguments because men were the dominant one’s in the household. The political participation of women got more difficult as more men became more interested in the participation of rhetoric. (Herrick) In Herrick’s book The History and Theory of Rhetoric, Aspasia was referred to as a hetaerae or a female exception due to education level, equal knowledge of politics, and could deliver speeches. She could do all the same things any male rhetorician could do, and more. She taught many people about the art of rhetoric including Socrates and influenced Plato in speaking. (Herrick, p.

45) where she says that Aspasia’s the only woman in classical Greek history to be able to uphold to the standards of what a woman should deliver in a public domain. This separation between men and women participation created the masculine setting for rhetoric as a whole. Carol Gilligan claims that women tend to be more collaborative while men are the competitive ones and are individualists. (Billig) Billig claims in his book, Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology, that since Aspasia was remembered as a part of the rhetorical tradition which is masculine, she would have an intellectual heroine. We can then determine that she was “right at the heart of the rhetorical story” because she instructed some of the most famous and familiar masculine names in rhetorical