The Oresteia And The Oedipus Cycles

In Aeschylus’ The Oresteia and Sophocles’ The Oedipus Cycles, the division between public and private life is related to the distinctions between man and woman and reason and emotion. Tragedy attempts to deal with these binaries by discussing the relationship between the state in combination and traditional gender divisions. In The Oresteia and The Oedipus Cycles, women have seemingly contradictory roles of power and influence, only to be marginalized by the dominant men of law and reason. These women’s power lies in non-traditional concerns of the state, such as grief and love. The state system values ration and reason, so their “feminine” interests are trivialized and removed from debate. In an attempt to eliminate partiality from state issues, the men of power simultaneously oppress women by restricting them to the private sphere. The powerful women of Greek tragedy are physically contained by incarceration, domestication, and murder, leading to …show more content…
The conversation between Antigone and Ismene at the beginning of the play shows two possible effects of forced female docility. Ismene submits to a position of passivity and fear, while her sister is wild with determination and rebellion. Antigone opens with the lines “Ismene, dear sister / You would think that we had already suffered enough / For the curse on Oedipus: / I cannot imagine any grief / That you and I have not gone through” (189). Here, Antigone is grieving for the death of her family, but also for her own life of submission. Her grief is made stronger because she is not able to express it. Oedipus’ actions have essentially muted the sisters, paralleling the restrictions placed on other women in their society by the hands of men. Ismene serves as Antigone’s foil, demonstrating the ineffectiveness of a compliant woman compared to the boldness of a woman breaking free. However, both women are struck down in the end,