Sexism In Antigone

Between the years 2000 and 2015, fifteen works by fifteen authors were awarded the Pulitzer Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in literature. Of those fifteen books, not a single story was written fully from the perspective of a woman. Three of the six winning female authors wrote stories featuring both male and female main characters, while all eight of the award-winning male authors had written stories only from a male’s perspective (Griffith). The underrepresentation of women in award-winning literature indicates sexism in modern society because stories about women are deemed as less engaging than those about men. Unfortunately, the underrepresentation and misrepresentation of women is not a new problem in literature. In premodern times, sexism occurs in literature much more blatantly, with male characters demeaning and objectifying female characters. Such as in the cases of The Epic of Gilgamesh and Candide, female characters were created only to benefit the storylines of the male main characters, and the personalities of the females would be two-dimensional and disinteresting. Even written works
Although the play focuses on a female character, sexism is still portrayed in the gender roles and male pronouns being the default. An example of this is when Creon learns that someone was trying to bury Polynices body. Creon says, “And the man who dared to do this?” (line 209). Crean automatically assumes that the man committing the deed is male, indicating that women are not capable of taking action in the same way as men. Women are further portrayed as weak and helpless when Creon is talking about his discord with Antigone, “If we must lose, let’s lose to a man at least” (lines 539-540). Creon’s statement reveals that he thinks women are so inferior to men that losing to a woman is disgraceful to a