Antigone And Lysistrata

Ancient Greek society was patriarchal to the point that women were not even considered to be citizens. Unsurprisingly, this dynamic of male dominance extended into their theatre practice, in which men played all of the characters--even the female characters--and men composed the entire audience (Della Gatta). Remarkably then, Antigone and Lysistrata both feature strong and assertive titular heroines, despite the androcentric culture in which they were were conceived and performed. Rather than challenging the patriarchal organization of society, however, these plays reinforce the slanted male characterization of women as inferior because men performed all of the roles and because Sophocles and Aristophanes wrote their plays for an entirely
As Lysistrata attempts to share her plan with Calonice, Calonice cannot draw her attention away from frivolous matters like shoes and clothes. After Lysistrata tells her that the men “won’t lift up/Their spears” Calonice declares “by the Two gods, I’ve got a dress to dye!” to which Lysistrata replies “or shields--” and Calonice interjects, saying “I’ve got a negligee to try!” Lysistrata replies again, saying “or knives--” and Calonice interrupts her again, exclaiming “ooh, ooh, and shoes! And Shoes to buy!” (Aristophanes 4). With this exchange, Aristophanes juxtaposes the connotatively masculine idea of weapons with the connotatively feminine idea of clothing and shoes. Calonice is chiefly concerned with buying shoes, interrupting Lysistrata’s serious concerns about war with her comparatively inconsequential tangents on clothing. Furthermore, Calonice swears “by the Two gods” that she has to dye a dress. Considering the grave importance of the Gods in Greek society, swearing by them for such a trivial statement characterizes Calonice as incredibly foolish. Using a male actor to portray this cliched woman serves to exaggerate the stereotype that she represents--that women are silly and vain. The dissociation between this caricature of a woman and the man playing her creates even more comedy. When Calonice exclaims that if Greece is “in
Rather than presenting his audience with a woman who breaks the ideals of her patriarchal society and succeeds, Sophocles gives Antigone a doomed fate. In the introduction for his translation of Antigone, Woodruff notes that “in a play intended for a male audience, [Antigone] does not accept male authority” (xviii). Antigone engages in multiple activities forbidden to women or traditionally reserved for men, such as surreptitiously meeting with Ismene in the dark before dawn and burying Polyneices (Woodruff xviii). Furthermore, Antigone generally subverts the concept of a feminine, maternal woman, instead giving up her marriage to Haemon for death and acting “hard and unloving” (Woodruff xviii). The all male audience of Greek theatre would resent how Antigone takes on the role of a man. Sophocles mimics this resentment through Creon’s outrage towards Antigone. At one paint Creon exclaims that “if [Antigone’s] not punished for taking the upper hand,/Then I am not a man. She would be a man!” (Sophocles 20). Like Creon, the Chorus harbors animosity towards Antigone, telling her “you’ve gone too far! You are extreme and impetuous” (Sophocles 37) and finally declaring “we wash our hands of this girl” (Sophocles 39). The Chorus’ rejection of Antigone is notable because they function to give the opinion of the polis, the same people who formed the audience and the same people who influenced the