Lysistrata: Does the Author Matter?

 Tyra Alexander

28 February 2024

EN*499

Dr. Ellis

Reflecting on Lysistrata


The feeling after reading Lysistrata is far different from my feelings after reading previous texts in this course. The play ends with a happy ending– the war ends and the men get to go back home with their wives. However, lingering thoughts in my head from Monday's class makes me wonder about the true intentions of the play. Since the play features a female heroine but is written by a man, I heavily question the intentions of Aristophanes and what he wanted to convey. In my humble opinion, Lysistrata and her women came across kind of deceitful in certain areas. For example with Myrrhine and Kinesisas, Myrrhine is essentially using the act of seduction to potentially get Kinesias to sign the peace treaty. One may argue that this is a very feminist move and powerful. However, that question mark still lingers given the author of the play.

This makes me wonder a lot about how one’s perception of a text may change due to who wrote it and what it’s about. I can think of a few examples but one that despicably calls this out is “Yellowface” by R.F Kuang. The book is about a white woman stealing a manuscript about the chinese war with hopes of publishing it as her own. However her agent made the author change her last name to an east asian-presenting last name so her book can be better digestible by consumers. I say all this to say that I truly believe that who writes the book greatly impacts how we perceive it. Since Aristophanes is a man writing essentially a feminist play, I have that question mark as I'm reading because although Aristophones can pull inspiration from what he sees, he’s never experienced it first hand therefore some of the language and how the characters are written can become disingenuous.


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