First, let us establish what the female gender was to a male. Women were thought of not as individuals but as a race. Hesiod, who wrote around 700 BCE, described them as follows: "The deadly female race and tribe of wives/Who live with mortal men and bring them harm" (Blundell 22). According to this, women are, by nature, wicked and destructful and are only endured as a necessary evil for the continuation of the species. Because of this negative stereotype, it seems as if a woman would never be given a chance to be more than this -- they are written off completely. The world of a woman's feelings, emotions and essentially their entire personality is completely separated from men's reality. The men's realm of understanding doe not permit love or any deeply personal relationship to provoke emotion. Emotion is instead reserved for politics and war. It is in matter such as these that a male would reveal feelings.

Sappho herself was very aware of this difference. Her understanding of the barriers between male and female emotion is illustrated in Fragment 16. "Some say an army of horsemen, some an army on food/ and some say a fleet of ships is the loveliest sight...but I say it is what-/ever you desire..." (Williamson 166). She goes on to tell of Helen, and tells us she desired to be with her lover, a man who was not her husband. The desire Helen feels for an individual is not something a man, more inspired by the sight of armies or ships than a loved one, would let affect him in such a way. The credit given to Helen in this respect is contrary to Alcaeus's (who wrote at the same time as Sappho and was also from Lesbos) treatment of the same issue entirely. Sappho reveal a level of respect for Helen's choice -- that her actions are justified because she sought that which she desired. An emotionless Alcaeus instead credits her for the destruction of the Trojan War. "But through Helen, the Trojans perished/and all their city" (Williamson 73). In this respect, he would have joined Hesiod. Being a woman, Helen is inherently evil.

Sappho's treatment of Helen brings up another aspect of her distinct feminine voice. Not only does Sappho support Helen's decision, she takes Helen out of her passive feminine role and puts her in the active love role, on that was traditionally reserved for a male. Helen takes the initiative and leave her husband, giving her the role of controlling her own destiny. This aspect gives the impression that women could make choices for themselves. Obviously, this is the exception and not the rule, but it proves the concept existed even if rarely manifested.

The last example of the femininity of the Sapphic voice is her ability to involve the reader through use of imagery. This is a literary tool that her male contemporaries seem unconcerned with. Take, for example, Alcaeus's plea to the gods Castor and Pollux. "...easily rescuing men from chilly death;/you leap to the tops of sturdy vessels...and in the perilous dark bring light/to a black ship" (Williamson 71). His attempts to enhance the mental picture are fairly uninspiring. Death is "chilly," vessels are "sturdy" and the dark is "perilous." The picture painted is not vivid or exciting -- one hesitates to even call it interesting.

On the other hand, however, Sappho uses language as a tool to pull the reader into the poem. Like Alcaeus's poem, Sappho's example is also a hymn, this one to the goddess Aphrodite (Fragment 2.) Through vivid imagery description, Sappho takes us to the grove she is calling the goddess to and gains a definite effect of beauty in nature and mellowness. In contrast, Alcaeus's attempt to inspire a picture of hue dangers of seafaring falls short of Sappho's standards. In this aspect, the feminine trait of imagery is linked to the trait of emotion because it is through the use of imagery that emotion is invoked in the reader.

In comparison her works to Hesiod and Alcaeus, it is indeed apparent that the world Sappho lived in was very distinct. Her songs reveal she is concerned with individuals, desire, emotion and beauty -- ideas male authors did not touch. One would imagine that if Hesiod or Alcaeus were to have read one of Sappho's works, the world she revealed would indeed have seemed foreign to them. The fact that there are no surviving contemporaries to consult makes Sappho's voice seem even more individual. Nonetheless, her unique style comes through again and again and this consistency is very reliant on her clearly feminine voice.


Bibliography

Blundell, Sue. Women in Ancient Greece. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1995

Williamson, Margaret. Sappho's Immortal Daughters. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995.