Below is a recommended video by Bookborn on violence against women in fantasy and the excuse that it’s historically accurate. As she notes, a lot of fantasy is set in a medieval-esque setting, so that’s the time period she focuses on. I write about earlier periods (Bronze Age, Archaic, Classical), but still what she speaks to has parallels and resonance.
I like how Bookborn tackles how such things are framed and the language used (as she said, “the how, not the what”). Bookborn also notes that sadly, many of the issues around violence against women and the problems around prosecution of such cases are not just relics of the past. At the end, she has a nice list of take-aways.
One thing Bookborn talks about is the class bias and how what we see in fantasy is related to aristocratic marriages, and thus to the importance of heirs to property/titles, and thus the concern around regulating the woman’s sexual activity (as Bookborn says, chastity and virginity) to ensure legitimate heirs. I see similar potential bias when thinking/wriiting about women in the Classical Greek world.
When it comes to Classical Greece, our sources tend to be Athens-centric and thus may skew our understanding of women and marriage in Ancient Greece (much the way the focus on aristocratic marriage in the Medieval period does). Democracy in Athens begins in the very late 6th century BCE and over the 5th cent., as the power of citizens increase, so does a concern of who may be a citizen. Pericles led the passing of a law that requiring that a child could only obtain citizenship if both parents were citizens (which would later bite Pericles in the behind when his legitimate sons died, but the Athenians passed a special exemption so that he son by the non-Athenian courtesan Aspasia could be a citizen). So the tightly controlled lives of Athenian women in the Classical period may be linked to the desire to control who got the privileges of citizenship. Our sources for other city-states are much scantier, but one may look to Sparta to find greater freedom, education, and a later marriage age for girls, for example.
Finally, as The MarySue (where I found this video) notes,
At the end of the day, we are also talking about fantasy. These stories don’t have to be historically accurate. The dragons and wargs aren’t real, so why does the terrible treatment of women have to be?
Ramblings 