The claim that Sappho’s poetry has a distinct voice is a valid one. However, the claim that a feminine voice can be heard is somewhat of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Sappho is the only female poet whose works survive from the archaic period, so it may be a compliment to her that she is seen as the sole feminine voice of her time. On the other hand, the term feminine voice can be seen as derogatory. For example, it could be interpreted as a way of saying that her work did not hold up to her male counterparts and that is what is distinctive about it. This paper will deal with the idea that Sappho's work gave voice to the unheard women of her time and that her work does have a distinct voice for women's issues.

One of the things that is glaringly obvious, and that Sue Blundell writes about, is that fact that Sappho was almost exclusively concerned with the world of women (p. 86), whereas the men were concerned with wars, battles, and talked of women as objects to be possessed. Sappho spoke of how beautiful women were (Fragment 132, Blundell p. 86), the effects that love has on a person (Fragment 16, Williamson p. 166), and deals with the separation that all women had to go through in that time period (Fragment 94, Blundell p. 88). It is not that Sappho just acknowledged that these things (women's beauty and their separation from loved ones) happened, but she wrote about how those things made her feel and also how the women in her poems felt.

Another thing that points to a difference in Sappho's poetry is the fact that men are treated in her work much as women are treated in the poems of her male counterparts. For example, in Fragment 31 Sappho speaks of a man but only in passing. She uses him more as a place-holder in the poem and not really an active player. By assigning men to this non-active, passive role, Sappho has managed to reverse the roles of men and women in her writing. While she has not turned women into warriors or political leaders, she has made them, and the situations they are concerned with, important.

Another distinctive quality about Sappho is that she took ideas about things that were thought to be weak and made them strong. An obvious example of this is in Poem 1 (Williamson p. 160), in which she makes the goddess Aphrodite strong and war-like in the matter of love. However, in other portrayals, Aphrodite is depicted as weak and vulnerable (Williamson p. 162).

Subtler examples are in the fact that Sappho wrote about emotions usually dealing with love or longing. Not only did she write about them, she gave them the tone of something that one is not to be ashamed of. In other words, there was/is something weak or inferior about acknowledging and discussing the emotional part of life, at least in men's eyes. However, Sappho gave those very things a serious account and by doing so gave them strength.

There are many other examples of how Sappho differs from her male counterparts. Those differences mentioned here are what makes her voice so distinctive. What is interesting is the stereotypical and somewhat sexist view that because Sappho deals with emotions directly and more prominently than any other subject, her writing is feminine. That is basically saying that women naturally deal with life from an emotional standpoint whereas men deal with life from a logical standpoint. Regardless of what imagery is used, such as flowers or garlands, it is the subject matter that is being judged as feminine. Perhaps that judgment is accurate, and perhaps it is not. The point to keep in mind is that Sappho was an amazing poet in her time and beyond. She gave a voice to women and brought to light many of the things that they dealt with. But being a voice for women does not necessarily make that voice feminine. In conclusion, Sappho definitely has a distinctive voice, but whether or not that avoice is feminine is completely subjective and more than a little irrelevant.

References

Blundell, Sue, 1995. Women in Ancient Greece. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Williamson, Margaret, 1995. Sappho's Immortal Daughters. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.