Nevertheless, She Resisted: Feminist Ethos and Agency in The Epic of Gilgamesh

: “Nevertheless, She Resisted” challenges the concept that female agency is located exclusively in texts written by women and argues that reframing representations of women reveals resistance to the existing patriar-chal social structures that excluded, erased, or overlooked them. This study is a forensic social anthropology that reconstructs the ethos of ancient women. It proposes a new rhetoric that examines the negative space occupied by female characters around and between the central male characters in texts written by men. I argue first that we can understand the ethos of women in ancient cultures even through texts that were written by men and for a culture that valorized masculine values, and second that modern principles of feminist ecological criticism can reposition the way we view women’s social, emotional, and cultural agency. Combining Ryan, Myers, and Jones’s feminist terminology of interrupt, advocate, and relate with the idea of resistance offers a new framework for studying ancient texts, identifies new terrains for feminist rhetorical applications, and further broadens the field of women’s studies.