Restrictions on the Lives of Upper-Class Women
Upper-class women were supposed to observe
standards of decorum1 that restricted her freedom of movement in public life and her contact with
men outside her family. A woman rich enough to have servants in her home who answered
the door herself would be reproached as careless of her reputation. So, too, a proper
woman would go out of her home only for an appropriate reason. Fortunately, there were
many such occasions:
religious festivals2,
funerals3, childbirths
at the houses of relatives and friends4, and trips to workshops to buy shoes or other articles. Sometimes her husband
would escort her, but more often she was accompanied only by a servant, which left
more opportunity for independent action. Social protocol also dictated the way in
which men dealt with women. For example, custom demanded that men not speak the names
of women in public conversations and speeches in court unless practical necessity
demanded it or the women were not socially respectable, as in the case of prostitutes.
Presumably, many upper-class women valued their limited contact with men outside the
household as a badge of their superior social status. In a gender-segregated society
such as that of the wealthy at Athens, the primary opportunities for personal
relationships in a wealthy woman's life probably came in her contact with her children
and the other women with whom she spent most of her time.
Standards of Beauty
Since they stayed inside or in the shade so much5, women rich enough not to have to work maintained very pale
complexions. This pallor was much admired as a sign of a enviable life of leisure
and wealth, much as an even, all-over tan is valued today for the same reason. Women
regularly used powdered white lead as make-up to give themselves a suitably
pale look6. As
depictions of women on vase paintings7, richly decorated and colorful
clothing8,
headbands, coiffures, and jewelry9 constituted important aspects of a woman's beauty as well.
