preview

The Punishment For Overstepping Creon 's Authority Essay

Good Essays
Open Document

The punishment for overstepping Creon’s authority was always going to be severe, however Antigone’s femininity made her punishment exponentially more sinister. In Sophocles’ “Antigone” there is a clear gender conflict that forms between the protagonist Antigone and the antagonist Creon. Antigone’s determination to give her brother a just burial inspired the people of Thebes, but enraged Creon. Although Antigone does not obsess over the gender struggle as much as Creon, there is no disputing that the gender roles of Ancient Greece fueled the central conflict of the drama. The clash between Antigone and Creon was symbolic towards the subjugation of women by men and the women who dared to defy their status. Although inadvertent, Antigone overstepped her societal boundaries as a woman by burying Polyneices and defying the orders of Creon. Not even a sane man would choose to defy Creon’s order to leave Polyneices unburied since it would inevitably lead to a bloody execution. However, Antigone faced worse punishment than a male would for committing the same crime. In the literary magazine Mosaic, Amy Story states “I claim that any account of the interaction between Creon and Antigone is inadequate without a feminist understanding of the gendered situations of the characters, specifically how radically limited Antigone 's situation is in being a woman (albeit fictional) in ancient Greece and how profoundly political Antigone 's rebellion actually is for the same reason”

Get Access