4. Aprendizajes y conclusiones
4.3. A tener en cuenta:
Patricia Vertinsky believes the issue of gender is not just about difference, but power and sexual hierarchy.285 Elaine Showalter brings home this point by noting that in
„looking at the history of gender relations we find sexual asymmetry, inequality and
280 From Sayers‟ translation of a passage from TBCII, cited in Sayers, „Martial Feats in the Old Irish
Ulster Cycle‟, p. 67.
281 Sayers, „Martial Feats in the Old Irish Ulster Cycle‟, p. 68. 282 Sayers, „Martial Feats in the Old Irish Ulster Cycle‟, p. 68. 283 Sayers, „Martial Feats in the Old Irish Ulster Cycle‟, p. 68. 284 Chadwick, The Celts, p. 131.
285
Patricia Vertinsky,„Gender Relations, Women‟s History and Sport History: A Decade of Changing Enquiry, 1983-1993‟, Journal of Sport History, Vol. 21, No. 1, Spring 1994, pp. 1-24.
male dominance in every known society‟.286 While this statement may be valid, there
certainly seems to be some societies which come closer to an equality of sorts with women playing an active and respected role, not just in social and economic life but in the typically male dominated arenas of sport, games and warfare as well. To some degree, the Ireland depicted in the Ulster tales may have been such a society.
Some of the earliest accounts of strong and/or warring females are the Greek and Roman tales of Amazon women.287 Amazons, suggests Nancy Dickson, have both a fundamental antipathy towards men and have a concomitant goal of an all-female society.288 Relying heavily on Mary Lefkowitz‟s Women in Greek Myth, Dickson further characterises the Greek Amazon society as the antithesis of the normative Greek world. In doing so, she further exposes the negative Greek message regarding the consequences of an all-female rule.289 As a result, Dickson questions the connection between the warrior women in the Irish tales and Amazons. While warrior women in the Irish tales are often referred to as „Amazons‟, the construction and function of these women in the Irish tales show the correspondence to be superficial and the differences to be significant.290 These aspects of warrior women will be examined further in Chapter Six.
If women did engage in strenuous physical activity or sport en masse (and perhaps in lower classes), their literate and artistic contemporaries, who were almost certainly male, found these sports unworthy of their notice. Catriona Parratt argues that it is possibly the acceptance of male-dominated and male-defined scholarship in sport history that has amounted to the little information available on women‟s sport history. Parratt suggests that a redefinition of the framework in which historians operate is
286
Cited in Vertinsky,„Gender Relations, Women‟s History and Sport History‟, p. 3.
287 The Amazon society, as depicted primarily in Greek mythology, was an all-female, man-hating tribe
of women and female children who, according to various accounts, engaged in self-mutilation (removing a breast), infanticide of male newborns and the pragmatic use of males in neighbouring tribe for procreation reasons only. For an account of the way the accounts change over time through the ancient period see Tim Newark, Women Warlords: An Illustrated Military History of Female Warriors
(London: Blandford, 1989), pp. 9-20.
288 Nancy Dickson, „Armed and Dangerous: The Virago in Early Irish Literature‟, Unpublished PhD
thesis, University of Maryland, 1999, p. 155.
289
Dickson, „Armed and Dangerous: The Virago in Early Irish Literature‟, p. 155.
necessary to allow research into the history of women‟s sport.291
Despite great strides towards different understandings of women‟s sport history the body of academic literature on women‟s sport in the ancient world has not grown very much in the last few decades.
Vertinsky suggests that there has been a gradual inclusion within sport history of a focus on gender. This has permitted a deeper and wider version of sport history and physical education to be celebrated. Additionally, notes Vertinsky, the conflation of feminism and certain elements of postmodernism have stimulated new approaches to sport history. Indeed, as Vertinsky noted of her 1994 review of the previous decade of women‟s sport history, the shift from scientific to literary paradigms presented fresh lines of enquiry. Postmodernism has, then, allowed a „fuller appreciation of those historically banished to the margins, such as women‟.292
By admitting different versions of sport history are possible, and desirable, it becomes clear that the history of sport for women might require that one search elsewhere for both evidence and influence. However, it is sufficient to say that for the most part ancient women (with the possible exception of the Spartan women)293 were not afforded much freedom of opportunity to engage in practices in the traditional domains of males.
When one moves to the Celtic world in general, even in approximately the same historical era, it seems there is slightly more room for women to manoeuvre. David Bellingham, however, suggests that „high ranking Celtic women enjoyed a degree of power unknown to their classical counterparts‟.294 Using classical Greece society and
mythology as a contrast to illustrate his point, Bellingham admits that while the Celtic myths were probably always told from a male viewpoint, „the human female
291
For a complete understanding of how this might be achieved see Catriona Parratt, „From the History of Women in Sport to Women‟s Sport History: A Research Agenda‟, in D. M. Costa and S. R. Guthrie (eds), Women and Sport. Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1994), pp. 5-14.
292 Patricia Vertinsky, „Time Gentlemen Please: The Space and Place of Gender in Sport History‟, in
Murray Phillips (ed.), Deconstructing Sport History: A Postmodern Analysis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), p. 231.
293
See A. C. Reese and Irini Vallera-Rickerson, Athletries: The Untold History of Ancient Greek Women Athletes (Oklahoma City: Nightowl Publications, 2002), pp. 97-99 and T. F. Scanlon, Eros and Greek Athletics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). For a view on women‟s involvement in sport in ancient Rome, see H. M. Lee, Athletics and the Bikini Girls from the Piazza Armerina,
Stadion, Vol. 10, 1984, pp. 45-76.
294
David Bellingham, An Introduction to Celtic Mythology (Rochester, Kent: Shooting Star Press, 1990), p. 9.
characters in Celtic myth are rarely the downtrodden or faceless figures of the Greek myths‟.295 Bellingham goes on to say that this might indicate that freeborn Celtic
women may have formed part of the bard‟s audience, which, he says, was certainly not the case in classical Athens.296
Sayers makes a point of saying that many of the martial skills or „feats‟ in the Ulster tales were learned from female teachers and notes that the „status accorded women in the legal texts of the period are mirrored in early Irish literature‟.297 Sayers claims
that the Ulster Cycle „contains a great number of references to the hero Cú Chulainn‟s relations with a variety of women presented essentially as equals‟.298
Rosalind Clark goes further and says that not only are women essential (important because of their supernatural powers) in the tales but they are the most interesting characters and she notes that there are a surprising number of women in the Ulster cycle.299 Kinsella would agree, stating that:
Probably the greatest achievement of the Táin and the Ulster cycle is the series of women, some in full scale and some in miniature, on whose strong and diverse personalities the action continually turns: Medb, Derdriu, Macha, Nes, Aífe. It may be as goddess-figures, ultimately, that these women have their power; it is certainly they, under all the violence, who remain most real in the memory.300
Reynolds uses these figures from Irish history and myth to dispel the „myth‟ of the Irish „Colleen‟ – „the gentle, modest creature with a shawl over her head and the limpid trusting eyes‟- which was a sentimental nineteenth century notion.301
On the contrary, Reynolds sees the Irish women of legend and literature as women of
295 Bellingham, An Introduction to Celtic Mythology, p. 9. 296 Bellingham, An Introduction to Celtic Mythology, p. 9. 297 Sayers, „Martial Feats in the Old Irish Ulster Cycle‟, p. 67. 298
Sayers, „Martial Feats in the Old Irish Ulster Cycle‟, p. 67.
299 Rosalind Clark, The Great Queens: Irish Goddesses from the Morrígan to Cathleen Ní Houlihan
(Savage, MD: Barnes and Noble, 1990), pp. 11-12.
300 Thomas Kinsella (Translator), The Tain: Translated from the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cúailnge (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. xiv-xv.
301
Lorna Reynolds, „Irish Women in Legend, Literature and Life‟, in S. F. Gallagher (ed.), Women in Irish Legend, Life and Literature (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smyth, 1983), p. 12.
„formidable character and tenacious will.‟302
Medb,303 for example, is depicted as a „masterful, boastful, wilful, power-loving, uninhibited woman who regards herself as the equal of any man, and one who must be seen to be equal‟.304
There are many stories of warrior women in the tales of Northern Europe. For instance, one of the most dramatic of the Old Norse tales concerning „maiden- warriors‟ is the story of Hervör.305
Carol Clover relates the story of Hervör who, as a young girl, shows more proficiency with a bow, a shield and a sword than with a needle and after a stint as a petty thief joins up with, and eventually becomes the head of, a band of Vikings.306 She visits her dead father to claim her father‟s sword (against his wishes) and continues her masculine ways until one day she settles down, marries and has two sons. Some folklorists see the story as just another case of masculinity complex, the subsequent resolution of the phallic conflict and the resignation of femaleness.307 However, Clover looks at it from the point of view of continuity through the generations and how, in this case, they must be linked by a female since no male exists. That is, Hervör is the sole representative of the intermediate generation. The essential male qualities, particularly those concerned with courage and martial skill, must manifest themselves in Hervör in order for her sons and grandsons to inherit them.308
Women in war and martial service often must assume the role of men or, in extreme circumstances, become men, to succeed. The requirement for many women, then, having either succeeded or failed, is to resume their feminine role. In many ways the Irish tales do not deviate from this pattern. However, contrary to the tales of many societies, once „defeated‟ by rape or marriage, the viragos of the Irish tales often do
302 Reynolds, „Irish Women in Legend, Literature and Life‟, p. 12. 303
Medb, Queen of Connacht, is a strong female character who features heavily in the Táin as Cú Chulainn‟s principle adversary.
304 Reynolds, „Irish Women in Legend, Literature and Life‟, p. 13.
305 The category of „maiden-warrior‟ is a subtype of the „shield-maiden‟ which according to Clover is
used to refer to „any and all women who take up the sword or associate themselves with warfare [or behave in unfeminine ways] however briefly and for whatever reason‟. Other subtypes include the valkyrie, the avenging mother and the maiden king. See Carol Clover, „Maiden Warriors and Other Sons‟, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, January 1986, pp. 34-36.
306 Clover, „Maiden Warriors and Other Sons‟, p. 38. 307
Clover, „Maiden Warriors and Other Sons‟, p. 38.
continue on in the role they have chosen for themselves; that of the strong, and sometimes martial, woman.
Peggy McCracken takes a fascinating look at the gendering of „the blood of war‟ and the concept of military heroism that legitimates violence in war only as that of males. She suggests that „legitimate violence, authorised by a higher good that requires heroic sacrifice, is traditionally the domain of men in most cultures: Only men should die in combat; the blood of war is men‟s blood‟.309
While women may be hurt, raped, wounded and even killed in war, it is usually as the result of „illegitimate‟ violence that takes place outside the battlefield.310 In essence then, „war and soldiering … have been an exclusive male preserve‟.311
Rosalind Clark asks whether it was the custom, in real life as in the tales, for women to become warriors.312 Clark suggests that there may be „some legal evidence that women at one time fought in wars‟.313 She cites „evidence‟ of a Saint Adamán who is credited with „putting a stop to conscription for women when he saw two women killing each other‟ in battle although Clark surmises that this may be legend. She notes that in the historical annals there is no mention of women as fighting in important combats or as having been slain in battle and goes on to suggest that warrior women may be a literary motif – enjoyable to the audience of a male- dominated society as part of the world of make-believe or the world of the far-distant past.314
Megan McLaughlin, discussing the Middle Ages, argues that warfare was not an exclusively male bastion.315 Women warriors in medieval sources are so numerous that McLaughlin finds it surprising that relatively little attention has been paid to
309 Peggy McCracken, „The Amenorrhea of War‟, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society,
Vol. 28, No. 2, 2003, pp. 625-644.
310
McCracken, „The Amenorrhea of War‟, p. 625.
311 McCracken, „The Amenorrhea of War‟, pp. 627-8. 312 Clark, The Great Queens, p. 26.
313 Clark, The Great Queens, p. 27. 314 Clark, The Great Queens, p. 27. 315
Megan McLaughlin, „The Woman Warrior: Gender, Warfare and Society in Medieval Europe‟,
them.316 McLaughlin examines the nature of medieval European military organisation in relation to the capacity of females to participate in warfare.317
McLaughlin argues that although warfare has been seen as a masculine activity in virtually all periods of human history, women had an increased opportunity to be involved during the early medieval period because warfare was organised inside the domestic arena and therefore in the female domain.318 Women and girls, who might be called up at a moment‟s notice to support their husbands and fathers in war, had to be prepared for these duties. McLaughlin surmises that girls may have even received some instruction in this along with their male counterparts.319 On the occasion that women took the lead and commanded such „armies‟ that these were small groups of most probably family and friends and would know her and therefore afford her more tolerance in a role not typically for females.320
In summing up, McLaughlin concludes that the presence of women on the battlefield cannot only be explained by claiming individual forceful personalities or unusual family circumstance but that the structures of warfare during this period made it less difficult for women to be participants. Yet in the Ulster Cycle, women did play an important role. The next section is a critical review of the body of literature which examines how it was that women did occupy such a prominent position in the early Irish Ulster Cycle. The contention is that the early Irish conception of women in general in the pre-Christian era may have been a factor.