Epiphany In Antigone

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“There are two days in which a woman is most pleasing¬—when someone marries her, and when he carries out her dead body.” Greek author Hipponax who lived in the fifth century BC expressed this opinion about women. In the Greek play Antigone, written by Sophocles in 441 BC, the daughter of Oedipus, the king of Thebes, Antigone, is condemned by King Creon, for illegally performing a proper burial for her deceased brother, Polyneices, whose body has been left in the battlefield, without the help of even her sister, Ismene. Antigone tries to fulfill the law of the god’s, by breaking the law of men, and ends up killing herself after being sent to die, causing Creon to have an epiphany about his mistakes and deceased wife and son, Haemon, who was engaged to Antigone. Although in the play Antigone it is displayed that men in Greek society were viewed as the stronger sex, Antigone conspicuously defies the stigma. Certainly, women in Greek society were supposed to be afraid of men’s power. This is evident when Antigone asks for the help of her sister, Ismene, and she responds, “We are only women, we cannot fight with men.” This displays that the custom is for women to follow all of the rules set by the men, who are the authority in every setting. In an essay written by Georgina Paul on females…show more content…
When she commits her crime, Creon has difficulty believing that a woman has been capable of such thing, “What does this mean? Surely this captive woman, why would she be taken?” This conveys that women are not believed to be capable of challenging the law and committing tenacious crimes in Greek society, unlike Antigone. Creon also automatically assumes that a man is guilty, “and the man who did this?” It shows that man are seen as the defying ones, not women, but Antigone has assimilated these qualities that don’t go with her gender’s standards, and would otherwise be denied to
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