Aspasia: Rhetoric, Gender, and Colonial Ideology by Susan Jarratt and Rory Ong

Ok, so I thought it would be fascinating to read this article first, simply because it is about Aspasia and I have studied her in the past and love her; however, I have not read this article before and struggled reading this article. I am grateful I have a background in Rhetoric due to my History of Rhetoric course; otherwise, I would have been a little more lost! Anywho…

To start this article off, there are three questions being posed by the two authors: "Did Aspasia exist? If so, can she be known? And then, is that knowledge communicable? (p 9). They also tell us how they are going to go about covering these questions. The one thing I do like is how they state, "a visual representation of Aspasia illustrates the multilayered operation of historiography in another way" (p 9). Personally, I agree with this statement very strongly. For us to even be able to discover anything about a woman who is teaching a man and writing speeches for a man in 5^th Century B.C.E Athens is absolutely incredible. What makes this even more incredible is the fact that she is not a native of Athens, but instead is from Miletus. However, during this time in Athens aristocratic women were highly watched, everything they did, every move they made, etc. was extremely restricted, to the point that they were confined to the house except during religious festivals.

As much as this talks about the historical aspects of rhetoric and the importance of making such a discovery, I find it to be a little drier than the other pieces I have read on Aspasia. I understand that the Jarratt and Ong are looking at how others view Aspasia and the importance she plays in this history, but I guess I did not like the sources they used, because if this is someone's first contact with Aspasia and with History of Rhetoric it is more complicated for them to read.

One of the other parts of this article I enjoyed is the very last paragraph. "Aspasia, perhaps the first female orator in the Western tradition, attracted not only the admiration of Pericles and the fascination of Socrates, but also the critical attention of a Plato intent on rereading the rhetorical world to which she gave voice" (p 22). How powerful is this. Aspasia is truly a fascinating woman and she is the reason scholars and researchers alike are doing more research into Feminist Rhetoric, because obviously there are more women writers out there that wrote our history, but are yet undiscovered because they have to be hidden behind a man. I am just glad works were discovered to pinpoint her as a writer for Pericles.