The symptoms in Aristophanes’ The Wasps

The symptoms in Aristophanes’ The Wasps

Nominally and ostensibly satirising the justice system, The Wasps is richly
interlayered and consequently can be read in several ways. I want to focus on the
notion of symptoms in the play and read motivations and plot in that way.

Firstly, though, I will list out the main themes of the play as I see them.

1. There is the theme of relationship between young and old, father and son.
The son Bdelycleon wishes to cure his father Philocleon of what is described
as a mania and obsession, that is of his involvement in the jury service of the
justice system. Bdelycleon believes that his father has an unhealthy
involvement with the jury service and should instead spend his old age at
home, aspiring to lead the lifestyle of a noble person. Most of the jury of old
men need the minimal pay for the service. This is not so for Philocleon. His
son, to whom he has passed over governance of the household, offers to
provide all for his father.

2. Indeed Bdelycleon believes that his father’s belief in this public service is
illusory: he is living in a delusion of power and is being manipulated politically
by the ruler, Cleon. This is the theme of political interference in the judicial
system unwittingly being carried out by Philocleon and his fellow jurors.

3. The relationship of Bdelycleon to the state and society. This is read indirectly
and asks the question of what is the proper relation of a household to the
state. Nominally and ideologically, the heads of households in Athens formed
the polis, the political structure of the city state. Nobles tended to withdraw
from public processes in favour of private influence. Bdelycleon is not
concerned with what will happen to the public system if his father – a leading
juryman, and perhaps middle class or minor nobility – withdraws.

4. A satirical theme running through the play is the jokes about the gods, religion
and heroes. For example, Philocleon takes on different forms such as animal
forms and the smoke from the chimney as do many of the gods in their
relations to humans. Philocleon attempts to escape from the house by clinging
underneath a donkey, a reference to Odysseus escaping from the Cyclops
Polyphemus by clinging underneath a sheep. Generally there are many
illusions made, for example with the flute girl when Philocleon attempts to
convince his son that she is a torch. So, we have the plays on illusion,
delusion, addiction and religion and the relationship of these to mental health.

5. And of course the satire on the justice system. The system is attractive to old
men who are not very wealthy, who have the time and need an income. They
are the old heroes of the old campaigns and by implication are out of touch
with contemporary society and easy to manipulate by the tyrant Cleon and his
supporters. They have all the bile and curmudgeonly-ness stereotypical of old
men and are portrayed in the form of wasps ready to wreak their ire in stinging
judgements more to do with outrage (somewhat hypocritically given their
minor misdemeanours in youth) rather than a consideration of the facts and
evidence. In this, also, Aristophanes reflects the class divide between nobles
and commoners that is mirrored and highlighted in the justice system.

Symptoms

The focus of psychological symptoms in the play is on Philocleon’s mania, as it is
referred to, for the work of the jurymen. This is called an eros, interpreted as an
obstinate and unruly passion: an obsession. Rather than philia, the love usually
associated with civic bonding and politics.

A second, less obvious symptom, is that of Bdelycleon’s broken heart. He is
described as being broken-hearted because of his father’s psychological state and
behaviour.

It is possible simply to see Bdelycleon as being perfectly well-adjusted, albeit
somewhat dour and boring, and for Philocleon to be neurotic and experiencing some
psychotic episodes if the shape-shifting comedy is viewed from the point of view of
mental health (delusions, hallucinations) rather than a comedy of religious
symbolism and metaphor. I am arguing that Aristophanes is layering the comedy and
it’s richness lies not just on the surface with what appears to be.

Symptoms can be defined in different ways. Here I am defining them in two ways:
the first follows Sigmund Freud and the second Jacques Lacan. In Freud’s view a
symptom is a dis-ease, a state and/or behaviour indicating a problem that would be
helpful for the individual and/or society to treat, hopefully bringing some relief, better
functioning and a return to ‘ordinary unhappiness’.

For Lacan, aspects of the symptom can be defined as being more deeply structural
and related to intergenerational problems transmitted through families and society.
Symptoms cannot necessarily be interpreted as a sign of something else which they
represent for an individual. To name this aspect of the symptom he used the term
sinthome, which he claimed was an early spelling of symptôme in French. The idea
is to identify and move closer to and understand - find an identity - in the sinthome
rather than trying to move away and distance oneself, to eradicate a symptom in a
cure.

Lacan derived meaning in part from the sounds of the word sinthome both in English
and French. In English he referred to ‘sin’ and to me sin-thome sounds like both ‘sin’
and ‘home’. This is pertinent to reading the play in the way I am, given that
Philocleon has become obsessed with judgement and jury service (guilt and sin) and
has a predilection to find guilt. He would rather distance himself as much as he can
from home, whereas his son wishes to confine him to home.

Bdelycleon’s broken heart may be an expression of the sinthome. In his childhood
did he experience an excessive judgement by his father; that of an over-critical father
who broke Bdelycleon’s love for his father with an all-pervasive sense of guilt? He
was always in the wrong. Now that the head of the household has passed to him, he
is able to present all his force in the arguments he puts to his father that he is right
and that his father is wrong. By a form of transference, if he can cure his father in the
Freudian sense, he may then believe that he can cure himself of the broken heart.
Bdelycleon may also be calculating, unconsciously or otherwise, that he may himself
in the future and in old age go the same way as his father. If he can stop this now
then he may magically stop it for himself in the future. Viewed in terms of a sinthome,
it’s more efficacious to get closer to the sinthome rather than seek to eradicate a
symptom, and in a way find one’s own symptom derived from the sinthome, a
symptom that one can live with and help with the old family symptoms of childhood.

In childhood Bdelycleon may have found his father’s shape-shifting difficult. There
was not a sufficiently boundaried space in the family to guide him, a space where he
knew the rules lay. His father might not have been such a shape-shifter in his
younger age. But maybe enough of one to present a less than guiding ambiguity in
the family that it was tough to work out. In the contemporary time of the play,
Philocleon has become obsessed with rules however they are distorted in the justice
system. This could be a somewhat forced attempt to boundary himself. Now that
Bdelycleon has the power of head of household, he has the force of argument to
impose strict boundaries on his father, constricting him to the house, perhaps to
achieve the longed-for rules of childhood. Philocleon resists this tight bounding with
more shape-shifting in the late part of the play after the symposium drunkeness,
when he is attempting to have sex with the flute girl. He says he will fool Bdelycleon
by disguising the flute girl as a torch, a trick he knew from youth. So perhaps he was
the shape-shifter all along.

Is Philocleon doing any harm either to himself or to others in his psychological state
and behaviour? His son believes that he is. If Philocleon could be cured of his
obsession then he could be leading a more appropriate life as a wealthy person in
old age, a way conforming to a norm. That new lifestyle, when Philocleon changes,
Aristophanes satirises at the end of the play. Philocleon gets drunk, reverting to an
unruly youthfulness and being abusive to the flute girl and the baker’s wife.
Bdelycleon believes that his father is doing harm to others in his pursuit of guilty
verdicts as a juryman. Philocleon is predisposed to making a judgement of guilt in
waspish anger, rather than the rational consideration of facts and evidence. Against
this possible harm though, there is the greater harm of Cleon’s political manoeuvres,
as Bdelycleon himself argues when attempting to persuade his father to give up
being a juryman.

The son has tried various methods to dissuade his father from jury service. None
have worked and he has resorted to confining him in the house. Bdelycleon then
works on what might be called a ‘remodelling’ of his father’s behaviour. This is like a
psychodrama within the drama. The ‘therapeutic’ process is achieved through the
form of a mock court set up in the home. The household dog is charged with stealing
a cheese. Bdelycleon puts his father in the position of a judge who can find the guilty
dog innocent. The son does this by trickery: changing round the voting urns. The
trick seems to do the trick. Philocleon’s experience is cathartic as previously he has
found it difficult to give a not guilty verdict. After this Philocleon is more open to his
son’s arguments and eventually is persuaded to give up his work. Then, following the
parabasis, we see Philocleon leading his new life of drinking and unruliness,
satirised as a return to normality.

So, has Philocleon returned to a state of ordinary unhappiness? It seems that one
symptom, if it is such, has been exchanged for another: a situation - in it’s frequent
occurrence - that was noted by Freud in his early writings on hysteria.

Perhaps it’s more useful to consider the symptoms in the play via the concept of the
sinthome. It seems to me that guilt in the family scenario is the driving factor and that
this sense of guilt is the driver for motivations in the play. In the external world this is
played out in the pursuit of judgment and the all-pervasive need for a guilty judgment
on Philocleon’s part. Bdelycleon wants to go in the opposite direction in moving
himself away from judgment and withdrawing towards the more noble pursuit of
enjoyment and the symposia at the end, though not approving of his father’s
drunkenness either. One symptom is exchanged for another and the two
protagonists are left no closer to an identification with the sinthome.

The trappings of the justice system seen from the point of view of symptoms, is the
outside projection of the family sinthome: guilt, sin, an ambiguity of shape and
distorted rules. The elephant in the household is the almost absence of a mother-
wife figure. There is a scant presentation of Philocleon’s wife and daughter as
Philocleon enjoys them trying to get his pay from him. The other female characters
are the flute girl and baker’s wife.

What might be attributed to this absence? Payment seems to figure. Flute girls could
be entertainers proper; slave girls forced into having sex, or prostitutes. This flute girl
can be seen as a torch; a light in the dark, a pseudo-religious shifting visitation of a
god; an hallucination or the product of a simple youthful trick: a worker doing tricks.