My Newbie Post and Thoughts on Gorgias' Encomium

I've heard a lot about Web 2.0 (even went to an IABC luncheon on this topic a few months ago), and have read a lot of other people's blogs, but until today have been able to avoid actually creating one. :-) I think this is going to be kind of cool, though, because like so many writers I usually have a lot of "really important stuff" to say.

I attended my first class at Eastern Michigan University last night, English 505: Rhetoric of Science and Technology. It's been several years since I last took a class, and I forgot how much I enjoy the chance to engage in the kind of conversation an academic setting provides. I think it's going to be a lot of fun, although I'm not yet able to envision the connection between rhetoric and science / technology. Patience is a virtue I'm still trying to learn, so I'll do what's required and see how it all plays out.

I have a comment about Gorgias' Encomium of Helen, which the class discussed last night. I was rather surprised to learn that Gorgias (and, presumably, others of the ancient era) were willing to accept that Helen of Troy may have been blameless in her experience with Paris. I did a Women's Studies minor as an undergrad, and one theme that recurs -- at least throughout the modern era (say, the last 1,500 years) -- is society's castigation of women who lose their virginity without benefit of marriage, regardless of their personal culpability. It was long believed that women were evil, and that they would do anything in their power to tempt men into sin (think: Adam and Eve).

Therefore, I found it particularly remarkable that Gorgias asserts that something other than Helen's own innate female wickedness -- such as fate, the gods, irresistable love, or Paris' treachery (whether he raped her, or if his "speech persuaded her and deceived her soul") -- may have been responsible for Helen's ruination. It makes me wonder if the patriarchy, in which men set the standards and rules for female sexuality, did not yet exist or had not fully developed in Gorgias' time.