Hera Gender Roles

The goddesses’ portrayal serves to exemplify female roles in society. First, Hera represents the negative side of a typical Greek marriage since she deals with Zeus’s affairs. Clearly, there is no love involved in their relation since Ancient Greeks did not marry out of love, but out of convenience. As a woman, Hera is expected to endure Zeus’s affairs with both other women and young boys since she becomes her husband’s property. Another of her roles as a proper wife is to give rightful heirs, which as explained in class, she does not. She delivers proper daughters –Hebe, Eris, Eileithyia–but none of the male children are equal to their father.
First of all, Hephaistos’s lameness and ugliness, whether he was born out of Hera or out of both gods, exemplifies Hera’s failure as a wife. On the other hand, Ares symbolizes their hateful union and their failure as a couple. In my own opinion Hera’s failure as a wife appears as an excuse for Zeus to fool around and emphasizes Zeus’s patriarchal rulership. Thus, Hera’s portrayal appears to caution women if they fail to beget proper heirs.
On the other hand, Demeter plays the maternal side of women. Her relationship with …show more content…
Ganymede can even be considered one of the luckiest of Zeus’s lovers since he was not killed, but became immortal and supplanted Hebe –Zeus and Hera’s child– as cupbearer in Olympus. Another famous myth portraying homosexual relations is the myth of Apollo and Hyacinth. In this myth, we appreciate a consensual relation between the god and the mortal, who at his death is transformed into the hyacinth flower by the god. If we compare Apollo’s relation with Hyacinth and Daphne, we are able to see that even though the male lover died, Apollo himself transformed him in order to honor their relationship. In contrast, Apollo also venerated Daphne by wearing a laurel crown, but she became a laurel tree in order to escape the