Socrates, according to the Symposium of his student
Xenophon, held that “woman’s nature is nowise inferior to
man’s” and that women should receive the same education as
men—a radical view in ancient Athens. But in this work
Antisthenes records the view that Xanthippe, Socrates’ much
younger wife, was “of all the wives that are, indeed that ever
will be, I imagine, the most shrewish.” Antisthenes asks
Socrates why he does not teach his own wife, to which Socrates
replies: "Well now, I will tell you. I follow the example of
the rider who wishes to become an expert horseman: 'None of
your soft-mouthed, docile animals for me,' he says; 'the horse
for me to own must show some spirit': in the belief, no doubt,
if he can manage such an animal, it will be easy enough to
deal with every other horse besides. And that is just my case.
I wish to deal with human beings, to associate with man in
general; hence my choice of wife. I know full well, if I can
tolerate her spirit, I can with ease attach myself to every
human being else." Antisthenes comments: "To wit, if he can
tame this shrew, he can tame all others" (all passages
translated by H. G. Dakyns).
Aristotle held a more unpleasant view of women than Socrates.
He believed that some humans were born to be slaves and some
to be rulers. Women were born slaves (though superior to
barbarians) because, according to sentences quoted by Fred
Miller in an article on Aristotle's political theory in The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “the male is by
nature more capable of leadership than the female” and
“females require male supervision.” As perhaps befits this
harsh opinion, Antisthenes' image of Socrates taming and
riding a shrew was reversed in an early 16th century
representation of Aristotle by the Strasbourg painter Hans
Baldung, who was known for antifeminist views.
Contrary to the spirit of Baldung's image, and to the way in
which Shakespeare treated his wife in his will, there is
evidence that Aristotle was kindly disposed to the women in
his life. "Antiquity mentions," says Stephen in Scylla and
Charybdis, that when dying he "frees and endows his
slaves, pays tribute to his elders, wills to be laid in earth
near the bones of his dead wife and bids his friends be
kind to an old mistress (don't forget Nell Gwynn Herpyllis)
and let her live in his villa." Gifford notes that the
ancient authority is "Diogenes Laertius (fl. third century
B.C.), who reports in his Lives of the Philosophers
that Aristotle's will freed and endowed some of his slaves,
commissioned a statue of his mother, and directed that he be
buried with his wife, Pythias, and that his concubine,
Herpyllis (apocryphal?) was to be allowed to live out her life
in one of his houses."
Xanthippe is mentioned in The Taming of the Shrew:
Petruchio goes on and on about how he would marry anyone for
her money, even one “shrewd / As Socrates’ Xanthippe or a
worse” (1.2.71-72). Shakespeare's own wife was thought to be a
shrew by one eminent scholar in Joyce’s day. In The Man
Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story (1909), Frank
Harris argues that Shakespeare had a “loathing for his wife
[that] was measureless.” He observes that Anne gave birth to
their first child, Susanna Shakespeare, a mere six months
after their wedding, and that Shakespeare was granted two
marriage certificates in 1582, one to an Anne Whately and the
other to Anne Hathaway. Harris argues that these are two
different people and that Shakespeare had his heart set on
marrying Whately but was stymied when Hathaway’s relatives
forced him to marry the then-three months pregnant Hathaway.
(Others believe that Whately and Hathaway are, in fact, the
same person. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare
(2001) notes that Whately is “almost certainly the result of
clerical error,” and that Harris “became a popular sensation
by interpreting the plays as the intimate autobiography of a
turbulent soul.”)
Harris muses that “if Shakespeare had married Anne Whately he
might never have gone to London or written a play,” and it
seems that Stephen too may be associating the intellectual
work of some great thinkers with their marital troubles. When
Lynch mocks him in Circe for talking of philosophy in
an infamous red-light district, Stephen answers him by saying
that three of the most brilliant men of western culture were
bitted, bridled, mounted, and ridden by a "light of love"—a
sexually desirable but difficult woman.
When Eglinton challenges him in Scylla and Charybdis to
say "What useful discovery did Socrates learn from
Xanthippe?," Stephen replies, "Dialectic." Shortly
later, he imagines Shakespeare trudging off to London with a
grievance that was personal, but not sexual: "Is Katharine the
shrew illfavoured? Hortensio calls her young and beautiful. Do
you think the writer of Antony and Cleopatra, a
passionate pilgrim, had his eyes in the back of his head that
he chose the ugliest doxy in all Warwickshire to lie withal?
Good: he left her and gained the world of men."
