Similarities Between Elektra And Antigone

Heroines in a Patriarchal Society For many years, there has always been an equality gap between males and females. Males being the more revered and desired gender, while females were the more disregarded gender, as they were forced to the mundane house work. Researchers have studied and learned how family dynamics work throughout history, with their research including archaeology, documents, and literature. In the 5th century, this sense of patriarchal dominance was no different in Greece than anywhere else in the world, but two Greek scholars in particular, Sophocles and Euripides, decided that in their writings, they would use female characters to play the protagonist as a way of challenging societal norms. These famous Greek authors use that method with their works, Elektra and Antigone, which not only represent female leads, but also nontraditional female personality traits at the time which offer comparisons between the two plays, but also some contrasts. Antigone was represented as a nontraditional female character because of her lack of …show more content…
She did this because family was her priority and she wanted to make sure that since her brother passed away, that he did so in peace. In Elektra, she had an extreme case of nomos when she decided that the best plan of action with dealing with her father’s murder was to kill her mother without asking for an explanation. Elektra was so loyal to her father that she murdered her mother to avenge Agamemnon’s death. Nomos was a strong fixture for the Greek culture that held everyone to a standard of having to fulfill certain duties, similar to the idea of karma. This is why Elektra and Antigone are so similar, because they share this strong sense of nomos which causes them to do whatever necessary to fulfill this moral