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Gender Roles in Drama

"A mourning woman is not simply a producer of pity, but dangerous. The message her lament carries is never fully suppressed."(Foley, 55)

In the Seven Against Thebes and Antigone, the deaths of Eteocles, Polyneices, and Antigone are all taken for granted - however grand and tragic those deaths are, they are not the primary communicators of the playwright's ideas. The true poetic license lies in what is said between the actions, in these two plays it can be found the most in lamentation. Through the medium of grief over death, the women of Thebes challenge social definition, political systems, and marriage systems not only of their time but of the then-current Athenian society.

According to Helene Foley, "the Athenian social system seems to have made a concerted effort to control the public behavior of women, especially in relations to death ritual."(Foley, 54) In the Seven Against Thebes, Aeschylus creates a Chorus of women who do virtually nothing except demand recognition, publicly, in their role as lamenters. Despite the constant struggle of Eteocles to subdue and silence them, the women simply will not shut up - their lamentation is a cry for legitimacy. In lines 200-201, Eteocles reminds the women that, "What is outside is a man's province: let no woman debate it: within doors do no mischief!" But they will not be hushed, and in line 712 they tell Eteocles, "Listen to women, though you like it not." Lines 821 to 1004 are the Chorus, Antigone, and Ismene, women all, lamenting the deaths of Eteocles and Polyneices - they are joined then by a Herald, who Antigone "forbids to make useless proclamations." The women are powerful here, and they remind Eteocles and the audience that the city of Thebes is not just a city of autochthonous warriors, as the story goes, but of families losing loved ones.

The play ends with the separation of the Chorus into two groups, both going to continue their lamentation for one of the brothers. The schism between the two halves is not caused by the law vs. family conflict of Antigone, but the one group supporting the brothers as part of one family, and the other recognizing only the one who didn't threaten to destroy their own families. Either way, the focus on the power that women hold over family and death is the last image of the play. Despite the compelling actions of the myth, it is the lamentation of the Theban women which informed the audience of the play's concerns.

The issue of family and death as the women's realm is also addressed in Sophocles' Antigone. Obviously, everything Antigone does is to claim these responsibilities above those issued by the state - and it is important to note that her actions are set up by the playwright to be accepted by the audience as positive. The negative aspect of a woman's civil disobedience is primarily described by the Chorus (who the audience should respect) as "going too far" (line 944), which I argue is not explicitly wrong, but is merely the heroic trait of excess. However, there are more than a few reasons for the audience to see Antigone's actions as the right and noble ones. Antigone's last lamentation before being led off to her death is a defense of what she did, and those are the final words on the subject - Creon tells her to pipe down, but he doesn't provide any argument with her statement. The Chorus absolves her of the responsibility for her fate, suggesting that she is paying for her father's sins. Her death curse, that Creon should suffer like her if he was wrong and she was right, is fulfilled in the deaths of Haimon and Eurydice (though their deaths may be part of the audience's expectation, I would guess that the curse may not necessarily have been). And even Teiresias tells Creon in line 1191, "you have no business with the dead," and that his proclamations over Antigone had been wrong. Even earlier, the Chorus thinks of rebelling against Creon themselves as they see Antigone being led to her death (lines 895-899). Clearly the audience sympathizes with Antigone.

In fact, the audience more than sympathizes with Antigone, they honor her. The very fact that she has a play made about her addresses and calls into question another popular view, that "silence brings glory to women." This idea, championed by Aristotle, Pericles, and almost every ancient Greek author we can find, doesn't quite fit with this outspoken young woman. The woman who is quiet about her suicide and sorrow is Eurydice - and she is mostly forgotten. Antigone is virtuous not only despite her disobedience, but because of it. But her disobedience is also more understandable in her role as epikleros: she is not controlled by any man, since her family is dead and she is still unmarried. Apparently, some "women who belonged to the elite wielded considerable power," (Just qtd. in Foley 78) especially epikleroi, and so this situation would have been culturally applicable to the Athenian audience. Perhaps Sophocles' treatment of her character is even a comment on that aspect of society.

Whether a Chorus of Theban women insisting on recognition of their place in society or a single woman beginning to question and redefine gender and marital perspectives, there was much said in the lamentations of the Seven Against Thebes and the Antigone. The story of the House of Cadmus was ancient then as it's ancient now, but the plays about it were new and fresh, and it was the words that fell between the acts of unchangeable fate that made the drama potent.

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Written April 16, 2003 at Oberlin College

Last Updated April 19, 2005