Women Within The Grecian Culture

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.

Misogyny pervades the picture Aeschylus, Aristophanes, and Sophocles paint of Athenian society. In their literature, however, female characters catalyze plot by challenging this picture. Such characters--from Sophocles’ Antigone to Aristophanes’ Lysistrata--face grim consequences for acting independently. Clytemnestra and Cassandra from Aeschylus’s Agamemnon exemplify this archetype of autonomy and destruction. When they confront injustice, male characters perceive them as vindictive and hysterical. This paper will compare the standards of justice Aeschylus’s society imposes on men and women. I will argue that Clytemnestra and Cassandra are protectors of divine justice who reject subservience and thereby transcend the sexism of their society.

The universal theme of feminism is represented throughout the novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and the play Antigone by Sophocles. The main character in Persepolis Marji and Antigone in Antigone both test the social standings and roles of women in their country and make sacrifices of their well-being to do what is right. Marji tested the social standings of women by wearing her veil incorrectly, putting herself at risk. Antigone defied her uncle, Creon the king, testing the social limitations of women in Thebes. Then Marji put her health at risk to find the truth. Next, Antigone put her life on the line to bury her brother Polyneices even though the punishment was death. Through quote analyzation from Persepolis and Antigone modern feminism is thoroughly displayed.

In classical Greece, women were widely hated. Misogyny was engraved into the vary culture of ancient Greece, in their religion, the Greek Pantheon, Pandora, one of the first women, unleashed all of the world's problems from the box containing them. Among the many stories in the vast literature of classical Greece, apparently humanity lived in relative peace and happiness until the creation of women, which, via Pandora’s treachery and women’s other shenanigans, we devolved to our current state. This trend of putting women down on a societal level is known as patriarchy and was incredibly common in Classical societies as compared to now, It is a natural progression akin to bureaucracy that becomes more common as a state ages, the small imbalance of men’s physical dominance snowballs into the state of Patriarchy we can see in Sophocles’s Antigone. We can see this kind of patriarchy in other societies, such as: China, India, and Rome. This society molded Creon into

While there, I surveyed Greek citizens for my research project, which is in the process of being published. My research consisted of examining the writings of Sappho and Sophocles. Both writers portrayed different aspects of Greek womanhood; Sappho portrays the realistic Greek woman, whereas Sophocles portrays the idealistic Greek woman. The gender roles written by Sappho and Sophocles are still prevalent in modern Greek society. In my research, I analyzed Sappho and Sophocles’ treatment of honor, marriage, and the definition of womanhood. I focused on two plays by Sophocles and fragments by Sappho. By looking at these works I compared the authors’ expectations of gender. I concluded that the portrayal of women by the authors was consistent with modern day Greek societal gender norms. From the text, I was able to ground the gender norms in Ancient Greek society and studied what was expected from Greek women. I used evidence from Sappho’s poems to illustrate how she portrayed the honor of her child along with the Greek women in society. Whereas Sophocles portrayed Antigone and Electra as being the Ajax, who is a mythological Greek war hero, which is out of society’s norms for a woman. My objective was to see how gender roles were defined in ancient

In the world of Ancient Greece, a large array of deities were worshipped. Each god had their own forms of identification in which they used to express themselves. This includes things such as personality, style, sexuality, and many other things. One of these forms of expression was gender. The Greeks seemed to focus more on the two typical genders, which are male and female. Some Greek gods seemed to play into certain gender roles, but others portrayed traits of the opposite sex. In this paper, I will be analysing the possibility that the Greeks believed the female and male genders were closely connected and that is why many of the gods are described with blended aspects of gender.

In the myths of the Centauromachy and the Amazonomachy, the Greeks found a manuscript for moral and disciplinary guidance in their dealings with the women of the time. By assigning the women of Greece hybris, Greek men targeted the women of Greece to intense programs of subjugation and social retribution in order to prevent the emergence of Centaurian or Amazonian traits, which would destroy the patriarchal nature of Archaic Greek culture. Generally, Greek myths tend to exemplify gender profiling as a way to polarize the sexes in order to maintain a stable and workable patriarchy. This is evidenced in the Centauromachy and Amazonomachy, which identify undesirable and inherent

Readers of the three Greek plays, Oedipus the King, Antigone, and Medea, can easily gather an abundance of information about the different cultural details within the Greek society at that time. One of the major cultural values that can be picked up from these three plays, is the roles of women in this society. The roles of women can be observed through a comparison between them and their male counterparts.

In the novels, “Antigone”, by Sophocles and “Persepolis”, by Marjane Satrapi, it is clear that the main characters are examples of modern feminist. Both novels demonstrate how Antigone and Marji broke through the limitations that were set on each of them and have similar characteristics that define them as they broke through the limitations that were set on each of them.

Female characters have been mistreated from Antigone by Sophocles to Trifles by Susan Glaspell. Although it was impossible to trace the beginning of the degradation of women, but Greek dramas played a huge role in patriarchy. Women were excluded from participating in the Greek dramas, although, female characters were always written into the script. Somehow, the directors, writers and actors in the Greek dramas, believed that the lives of women weren’t significant enough and the actors portraying women always had the roles of maintaining the house and taking care of the family.

Gender roles are indicators of how a society is structured, based on the expectations of men and women. In particular, most of the surviving sources from the period are written from male perspectives, so what remains is how male writers reinforced their idea of a woman (Blundell, 2001). Characters of each gender needed to fill a set of expectations to conform to societal definitions of each gender, with characters defying such expectations being seen as shocking and unexpected. Under this lens, male characters are treated as being in a dominant position where the female characters had a secondary role in the way their society was run. Whenever a female character played a main role, she then took on many masculine characteristics but in doing so is treated as being an unsettling other The unsettling nature of these characters to Ancient Greek audiences defines them, making the choice of characterizing these women in such a manner all the more deliberate as is the case in works such as Medea, Agamemnon and Lysistrata. All of these works involve a female protagonist whose actions are treated as abhorrent within the work simply because they chose to take control for themselves. In contrast, male characters are not met with the same response for similar actions, because the traits required to be capable of them fall within the masculine sphere of expectations. From this position of male comfort, a woman acting outside of her role was not meant to be celebrated and instead

In the ancient Greek texts, Medea by Euripides and Antigone by Sophocles, the role of women was challenged by the actions each women endured. By using over dramatic situations, the true place for a woman during this time period is exposed. The role of a man and a woman at this time were incredibly contrasting. Through the defiant acts of women, the authors of Medea and Antigone displayed the weak role of women in a male-dominant society, and reactions such as exile occur in order to limit the reformation in society.

Feminism during the time of Oedipus and Medea centered on women actually trying to make their voice known in the world. Today, the battle of the sexes continue; however, women have already established their importance on society and focus fighting more for equality with men. According to Loren Edelson’s article “The Trope of Transformation in Medea: A Noh Cycle,” she describes the difference between culture feminist and materialist feminism. The first focuses on the women's roles in society while the other focuses on “‘woman as a class oppressed by material conditions and social relation’” (Edelson 59). Furthermore the feminism described in these tragedies are expressed through their characteristics and how often they take part in the stories. In the time of these tragedies, women were expected to be overruled by men with little or no authority over the situations they faced in their life. Both of the main women in each of these stories live in a time where the husbands are the ruler of the household, but these two women don’t let them have all the power. Both “Oedipus the King” by Sophocles and “Medea” by Euripides highlight feminism, through the women’s characteristics, their drive, and their actions.

Feminism is described as the “advocacy of women's rights on the ground[s] of the equality of the sexes” (Oxford Dictionary, 2017). However, like any definition the term can be branched off into many different subcategories, two of these categories are: Ancient feminism and modern feminism. Ancient feminism is simply acts of feminism displayed in the ancient world, however these acts are not consistent with modern feminist acts such as women’s suffrage, but instead take the form of performing acts such as behaving without the guidance or permission of a man, acts that were rarely committed in Ancient Greece. In contrast, modern feminism is feminism as it exists today, as acts of dominance among women as the long struggle for equality between sexes begins to level out and women become more daring in their attempts to finally achieve true equality with men. Throughout The Odyssey, by Homer, there are many examples of both modern and ancient feminism, however when viewed through the lens of modern feminism, the brave acts of ancient feminism not only reveal many concerning factors of today’s inequality but achieve a level of respect for those now called ancient feminists. One example of an ancient feminist easily examined through a modern lens is Queen Penelope of Ithaca, wife of Odysseus, from The Odyssey. As the lone queen of Ithaca it was Penelope’s job to both rule her country, raise her son, Telemachus, and protect her family and any chance of her husband Odysseus’ nostos

In Ancient Greece, literature was a reflection on what values society was thought to have. Men were the dominate figures in holding all the political and social power while women had no part in politics and their voices were not supposed to be heard. Euripides eliminates ideas of traditional men in society by crafting