Sophocles Gender Roles

In the play Antigone, men view women as a threat to their masculinity and do whatever they have to in order to silence them. However, the women find ways to speak out anyway. Gender has profound affects on the meaning of Antigone's actions. Creon feels the need to defeat Antigone more so because she is a woman. Antigone's rebellion is especially threatening because it upsets gender roles and hierarchy. By refusing to be passive, she overturns one of the fundamental rules of her culture.

Within the play, Creon blatantly states: "We cannot give victory to a woman. If we must accept defeat, let it be from a man; we must not let people say that a woman beat us" (187). While, in light of the moral standards within Greek society, his rationale may have been

Gender and its roles are exposed in the story of Antigone as the central themes. Roles and rules are set and followed by several people in this era, this is appreciated in this text. Ideas of contradiction to these rules were not explored. In Greek mythology, several women held positions of power, but none of these women were human, making the idea of a powerful woman godlike and unattainable, as if to keep woman in their place, which of course, was always under the rule of the superior gender, the male. To challenge a patriarchy with feminism was dangerous, for both sexes were equally protective of it, leaving the challenger desolate in the battle against it. To rely on women to help other women rebel against this social norm was not probable, in the contrary, women held each other accountable for complying to these rules and punished those who didn’t. Women were their gender’s prevalent critics and suppressors, not only because they feared the repercussions, but since they didn’t have the means to rebel against it.

In Sophocles’ Antigone, gender roles are a major conflicting theme throughout the entire play. The setting of the play was written during the Greek mythological days, around 442 B.C. During these days, men were dominant and held all of the power, so women were automatically treated as less. Antigone and Creon portray the conflicting sides between male and female, and Ismene and Haemon portray opposing sides to Antigone and Creon’s actions. Antigone, Ismene, Creon, and Haemon each show differences in behavior due to their sex versus the actions each character chooses to take. Antigone tells Ismene about her plans to bury their brother, Polynices, which is going against Creon’s orders. Antigone and Ismene, have contrasting perspectives on

The female characters portrayed in Aeschylus and Sophocles’ works have considerably different personalities and roles, yet those females all have the common weaknesses of being short-sighted and stubborn. They intensify the conflicts within their families while being inconsiderate of the impacts that they may bring to their nations and societies, which leads to consequences that they are incapable of taking responsibilities for. Clytemnestra and Antigone, two major characters in their respective author’s works, possess different motivations for their deeds in the stories. While Clytemnestra is driven by the desire of revenge to murder her husband Agamemnon, Antigone acts against Creon’s will and strives to properly bury her brother. Despite having different motivations and personalities, Clytemnestra and Antigone both commit

In the Greek play Antigone writer Sophocles illustrates the clash between the story’s main character Antigone and her powerful uncle, Creon. King Creon of Thebes is an ignorant and oppressive ruler. In the text, there is a prevailing theme of rules and order in which Antigone’s standards of divine justice conflict with Creon’s will as the king. Antigone was not wrong in disobeying Creon, because he was evil and tyrannical. The authors of “Antigone: Kinship, Justice, and the Polis,” and “Assumptions and the Creation of Meaning: Reading Sophocles’ Antigone.” agree with the notion that Antigone performs the role of woman and warrior at once. She does not only what a kinswoman would, but also what a warrior would do.

In Sophocles’s Antigone, we can see that the deeply misogynistic society of ancient Greece has manifested itself into Creon, a despotic ruler, despising dissidents, traitors, and especially women. His hatred of women manifested into several examples of misogyny throughout the play: He assumed that the criminal who buried Polyneices was a man, he looks down on Antigone’s defiance as improper defiance of a mans order by a woman, and he virtually disowns his son Haemon for disagreeing with him and listening to a woman.

To start, Antigone was written by Sophocles to make the people question their faith in both their religion and their government. Putting a young woman in a position in which she had to choose between staying loyal to her country and staying loyal to the gods, Sophocles showed the men of Athens in their comfortable lives that there wasn’t always a simple solution to all of life’s problems. It is important to note that it was only the men of Athens that were shown because they were the only ones that were able to see this remarkable play because of its depiction of women, specifically through Antigone. In a way, if women had been able to see this play, being

Just as one stone removed can break a bridge, one flaw can bring a man to ruins. The flaw of one man cannot bring down an entire kingdom, but rather one outlook of the king can lead to the demise of the whole. In Sophocles' epic tragedy, Antigone, a strong gender bias is present throughout the tragedy, and is partially responsible for the downfall of the king.

to his son, “To all one’s enemies. Do not be fooled, my son, By lust

wife, and his will to live, but is doomed to live on in his pain. Antigone

Euripides and Sophocles wrote powerful tragedies that remain influential to this day. The vast majority of work recovered from this time is by male authorship. What remains about women of this time is written through the lens of male authors’ perspective and beliefs about the role of women in Greek culture. The works of these two playwrights frequently characterize women as unstable and dangerous. Agave, Antigone, and Medea are all undoubtedly the driving force behind the tragic action in these plays. It is their choices that lead to the pain and death of the people around them. Through an examination of the evidence from three separate works, Antigone, The Bacchae, and The Medea, the role of women in ancient Greek tragedy becomes clear. The actions of Agave, Antigone, and Medea repeatedly prove their characters instability and danger.

The different portrayals of female characters Antigone and Lysistrata illustrate the fundamental nature of the proper Athenian woman. Sophocles' Antigone allows the reader to see that outrage over social injustices does not give women the excuse to rebel against authority, while Aristophanes' Lysistrata reveals that challenging authority in the polis becomes acceptable only when it's faced with destruction through war. Sophocles and Aristophanes use different means to illustrate the same idea; the ideal Athenian woman's ultimate loyalty lies with her polis. This Greek concept of the proper woman seems so vital when considering Athenian society because both a tragedy and comedy revolve around this concept. The differing roles accorded to

The famous playwright not only introduces characters who promote feminism, but he also punishes those who believe women are inferior. Creon believes that women should obey men’s orders and is eventually punished for misogyny. “[Creon] wish(es) [that he] weren’t alive” (65) as a result of having a misogynistic attitude. He is soon punished as he realizes that the death of his son Haemon and his wife Eurydice were all caused due to his misogynistic attitude and stubbornness towards the decisions he later regrets. Furthermore, Creon is punished due to the fact that his set laws prohibited women to freely express their opinion and such resulted in him being the main victim of several deaths. Creon “invite(s) death” (65) and causes the citizens of Thebes to revolt against his foolish decisions resulting in his reputation as a king to diminish. Likewise,

The Importance of family and cultural values is proved in the Greek playwright written by Sophocles. Sophocles helped us understand each character as we meet them in the first scene. Antigone, we learn that she is the antagonist as she rebels against her uncle, Creon, and her love of her own blood, and that she is not one to stand down for any man. Antigone, Ismene and Creon are characters that are of discussion in the play of gender roles.