Essay about Women Behaving Like Men in Antigone,...

Women Behaving Like Men in Antigone, Electra, and Medea Throughout Antigone, Electra, and Medea, many double standards between men and women surface. These become obvious when one selects a hero from these plays, for upon choosing, then one must rationalize his or her choice. The question then arises as to what characteristics make up the hero. How does the character win fame? What exactly is excellent about that character? These questions must be answered in order to choose a hero in these Greek tragedies. In historic Greece, the characteristics of a hero were for the most part left only for men to achieve. Heroes were viewed as those who were kind to friends, vicious to enemies. They were also men who risked†¦show more content†¦Creon’s first law as king, that of refusing burial to Polyneices, was directly contradictory of the unwritten rights of the dead. Antigone, however, realized that the laws of the gods and the piety to her brother eclipsed those laws of Creon, her rationale being that â€Å"it was not Zeus who published this decree, nor have the Powers who rule among the dead imposed such laws as this upon mankind† (Antigone 16). Admirably, and heroically, she was willing to give her life to fulfill her obligations to the gods and her brother. However, Electra’s kleos was achieved differently then that of her Theban counterpart, for she acted in hatred and vengeance, and out of love, to win her fame. To avenge her father, she believed she must kill her mother, but one has to wonder if her only motivation is vengeance. The truth is she had grown to hate her mother, to hate everything about her, although much of this hate was justifiable. After all, not only was Clytemnestra responsible for the death of Agamemnon, but she was also responsible for the exile of Orestes and the slave-like treatment of Electra herself. Through Electra’s participation with Orestes in the murder of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, she won her fame, or perhaps, notoriety. On the other hand, she was like Antigone in that her excellence lay in her loyalty to family, or at least the family who loved her. Her love for her father and for OrestesShow MoreRelatedEssay on The Lives of Athenian Women1880 Words   |  8 PagesWomen in classical Athens could not have had an extremely enjoyable experience, if we rely on literary sources concerning the roles of women within the Greek polis. The so-called Athenian democracy only benefited a fraction of the entire population. At least half of this population was female, yet women seem to have had very little influence and few official civic rights. `The position of women...is a subject which has provoked much controversy. (Lacey: 1968, 151). Studies concerning the