Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Please help me analyze the Greek passion in Antigone in regards to democracy, God, and marital life.

I'm not sure exactly what your question is, but here's
what I can make of it.


Ancient Greek culture was broken up
into two categories: Free people and Slaves.  Later, as society evolved, Free Greeks
were divided into Citizens and Metics.  According to my
notes:



A
citizen was born with Athenian parents and were the most powerful group, that could take
part in the government of the Polis. After compulsory service in the army they were
expected to be government officials and take part in Jury Service. A metic was of
foreign birth that had migrated to Athens, to either trade or practice a craft. A metic
had to pay taxes and sometimes required to serve in the army. However, they could never
achieve full right s of a Citizen, neither could they own houses or land and were not
allowed to speak in law
courts.



Ancient Greek society
was a complete Patriarchy:


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The social classes applied to men only,
as women all took their social and legal status from their husband or
their male partner. Women in ancient Greece were not permitted to take part in public
life.



Here's
how men were viewed by themselves and in comparison to gods (their
ideals):



“The
note here is one of humility and resignation: Man is no more than grass, in comparison
with God." --H. D. F. Kitto, The
Greeks



So, if men
are viewed as no more than grass, how are women viewed?  As below grass?  Dirt?
 Worms?


When viewed through the lens of
Antigone, Sophocles subverts the cultural values of the traditional
Greek system, especially when it comes to women: Antigone takes the moral high ground
from the male King.  Do the gods not choose Antigone to speak for them instead of their
King?


Antigone and Ismene are both unmarried.  Antigone
should be powerless, like Ismene, both because she is a woman and because she is
unmarried.  She such be a princess, since her father was king and her uncle is now.
 But, she does not rely on traditional status as a woman or a princess to define
herself.  Instead, she is a kind of holy sister and priestess--one who performs the will
of the gods.


Her passionate duty is to the dead, her
brother, and the gods.  She openly defies both the male and the King in Creon.  She
openly refuses to be married to Haemon, choosing to perish inside a cave than be given
status afforded her as a princess.  As such, she is a Romantic heroine: a Gothic rebel.
 She has the same death wish that the Romantic spirit of rebellion
cherishes.


As such, Antigone is a modern, humanistic, and
feminist character--light years ahead of her time.  She belongs more to the 20th Century
than the ancient Greek civilization.

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