Antigone And Lysistrata Analysis

Through the texts Antigone and Lysistrata the reader sees women making waves in their government and turning social standards upside down. The male reaction to woman shows the connection between gender roles and sexuality with the time period. The protagonists Antigone and Lysistrata in their respective texts show the reaction of a society seeing a woman thinking for herself for the first time. In Antigone and Lysistrata women are oppressed, due to men fearing their own roles in the government, and over come the gender stereotypes defining them by asserting their independence and characterizing themselves by their actions and words to achieve equality.
The gender roles the women in Antigone are defined by are characterized by age-old issues passed down from generation to generation, making them harder to change and for people to see the fault in them. Women are treated are the way they are to keep civil obedience and limit their free will. Creon, as well as those in power before him, strives to keep all the …show more content…
From a young age women in Lysistrata are taught they to be “always servicing [their] men, waking up servants, putting the baby off to sleep or washing it or feeding it” (55). The confrontation between the old man and the old woman shows this gender stereotypes of the Greek society are hard to change due to the preexisting ideas followed by society. Women are meant to keep up with the family’s finances, cleaning, and other chores around the house, but their main role is “first thing each day they are hard at it, woman on top” (60). Women are to be prepared for their husbands’ arrivals and to spend the day cleaning the house so when their husbands get home they are clean and ready for sex. “No wonder the tragedies are all about us; we just fuck and get rid of the babies” by sending them off to war