Ancient
Weddings
by Jennifer
Goodall Powers, SUNY Albany
Original text
© 1997 Jennifer Goodall Powers
Sappho and Her
Wedding Songs
Sappho's Attitude
Toward Marriage
Because Sappho's
fragments (that we have today) do not concentrate on heterosexual
unions, we must start by working backwards in order to determine
her attitude towards marriage: what is not being said? For instance,
her daughter, mother and brothers are mentioned in fragments,
but her husband is conspicuously absent from all her fragments.
Does this indicate that Sappho dismissed marriage as an important
part of Greek womanhood (or that she herself was not married)?
Probably not, since
she did write an entire book of wedding songs. As mentioned above,
the thiasos was responsible for preparing the girls for
marriage and a surrender of virginity. Blundell contends that
Sappho held marriage in very high regard as a part of female
maturity:
... [the
epithalamia] testify to her recognition of marriage as a crucial
element in women's experience. But marriage also brought the
pain of parting from family and friends, since it involved transference
of a woman to another household, and often to another community.
This may well have been the cause of the separations which form
the background to a number of Sappho's poems ... The pattern
of conquest and domination which characterizes the male lyricists'
idea of love is replaced in Sappho's verse by a model founded
upon reciprocity; and the tension which underlies the poem is
created, not by a "will the lover get the girl" scenario,
but by the context of the enforced parting.
This substantiates
the point that these poems are infused with a female point of
view that added credence to what she is saying to the girls.
The girls turn to Sappho for guidance during their preparation
for the important transfer to marriage. Hallett explains:
Significantly,
the only writer of the archaic and classical periods who delights
in the details of the marriage rites for their own sake, and
who in fact regards the marital union as an important and equal
source of pleasure to bridegroom as well as bride, is Sappho.
... Sappho's wedding poems, moreover, indicate that the female
members of her milieu were profoundly concerned with their physical
desirability as brides and the prospect of losing their maidenhood.
In celebrating marriage
and wifehood with the epithalamia, Sappho encourages the girls
to look forward to marriage as a happy time of life without fear.
The school did not, however, necessarily suggest that the girls
give up the love of other women, as shown in Sappho's own ability
as a married woman to write about her love for women. Snyder
continues:
That Sappho
did write such songs seems to have puzzled some modern readers,
who find it difficult to reconcile her involvement in the institution
of marriage with the passionate love poetry she addressed to
other women. In the absence of any independent concrete evidence
about the social structures of sixth-century Lesbos, all that
can be said with certainty is that for whatever reasons, Sappho
herself did not regard marriage and lesbianism as mutually exclusive.
In Sappho's world, there is room for coexistence.
As homosexuality
did not endanger the production of legitimate children (as an
extra-marital affair would), it was not a threat to men and was
an acceptable outlet for women.
While marriage may
not seem on the surface to have been Sappho's primary focus,
it definitely influenced the themes of her poetry. Preparation
for marriage and loss of virginity dictated the nature of her
instruction as headmaster of a thiasos and informed her
roles as a poet and celebrant in Greek weddings. In fact, celebration
of the wedding ceremonies of her friends provided inspiration
for her epithalamia.
