Lysistrata (the character) is my favorite. While her second-in-command, Kleonike, is bawdy and amusing, Myrrhine is fiery and determined, and the Spartan woman Lampito is agreeable and enthusiastic, Lysistrata is the spearhead of the whole operation. She brings together an unlikely group of people, from warring states and unites them through a common cause. She then proceeds to be the best leader possible, defying male attempts at putting the women "back in their places" and using what education she received to negotiate peace between bullheaded groups of men. She truly is admirable as a strong female character, and there should be more like her. Even though literature has seen a recent influx in empowered female protagonists, it seems inevitable that their stories are complicated by a love triangle or some other romantic dilemma. Lysistrata is simply quite done with what she sees as a fruitless war and uses sex as a weapon to let men also find common ground and come together to reach an accord.
I would recommend reading this play, but only if you as a reader enjoy or tolerate rather immature sexual innuendos and can tamp down anger at misogynistic commentary. This play has to be taken with a grain of salt; it was first performed in 411 BC in a society very different from our own, so not all of it can be taken as literal truth. Aristophanes lived in ancient Greece where men and women were treated even more differently than they are today, but he rises women up on an equal intellectual plane as men and even a higher moral plane than men. I enjoyed some of the jokes, because some of them are funny; after the women dump water over the men literally trying to smoke them out of the Akropolis, the Koryphaios of men indignantly lists his woes to an Athens commissioner ("We're flooded/with indignity from those bitches' pitchers--like a unch/of weak-bladdered brats. Our cloaks are sopped. We'll/sue!") and the Athens commissioner responds with, "Useless. Your suit won't hold water. Right's on their side." (56). Badum-tss! Hold water? Get it? Their cloaks--yeah, I was a little too amused by that pun. But in all seriousness, this is a relatable, funny play that may contain some sexist and inappropriate lines, but I consider it to be slightly ahead of the times. Most ancient Greek playwrights don't really empower mortal women too much. Aristophanes accomplishes that task beautifully. Even ancient Greek myths don't put mortal women in such a position of empowerment. Andromeda is the poor princess who has to be saved by Perseus, Ariadne was abandoned by Theseus, Eurydice was sent back to the underworld by Orpheus. Ancient, mortal Greek women are constantly being saved or banished by men, yet the women in Lysistrata refuse to be as tragic as those mythical women.
In close reading, I referred back to Thomas Foster's "It's All About Sex..." and "...Except Sex" chapters in How to Read Literature Like a Professor. That was the most obvious resource for me, and it did help. In Myrrhine and Kinesias's one-on-one scene, they escape to "Pan's grotto." A grotto is a cave or cavern, which could be a vaginal reference. At some points, I tried to ignore Foster's telling advice, mostly because I felt like I would get too dirty-minded if I kept going on like that. Nabokov's advice held little influence over me as I read this play; I don't think he had ancient Greek sex wars in mind when writing about the "go-between" and "prism" of great literature. I did follow his advice on noticing details, because if I didn't in this play, I wouldn't notice the especially punny parts, and the especially emotional parts of the play as well. Due to Nabokov and Foster's influence, I read this play casually, but a close casual, because not reading close...well, then what's the point?
Look, it's Nabokov!
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