In this book, Mary Townsend proposes that, contrary to the current scholarship on Plato's Republic, Socrates does not in fact set out to prove the weakness of women. Rather, she argues that close attention to the drama of the Republic reveals that Plato dramatizes the reluctance of men to allow women into the public sphere and offers a deeply aporetic vision of women's nature and political position--a vision full of concern not only for the human community, but for the desires of women themselves. --! From back cover.

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• The Woman Question
• The Action of the Argument
• The Drama of Glaucon’s Aporia
• The Conflict of Thumos and Eros in the Hunt
• Taming the Hunting Women
• Women and Men, Exercising Naked, Together
• Hera, Artemis, and the Political Problem of Privacy
• Socrates’ Proposal of Robes of Virtue
• The Tragedy of the Philosopher-King
• Woman is a Political Animal
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author