Women In Sophocles Antigone

Travel back to Ancient Greece. Sounds fun right, Well, not if you were a woman. If you were a man in power you would have been sitting high up on your pedestal not worrying about a care in the world. While women on the other hand were treated very poorly. They had little to no rights, and were confined to the limitations of their household. You can see this unfair treatment of women in the tragedy Sophocles play Antigone. Ismene in Antigone shows and shares all of the characteristics that an Ancient Greek women possesses. Contrary to Antigone who stands against the rule and tries to break free from this stereotype. Women of ancient greece were fearful, disposable, and submissive to men.
Women in Ancient Greece were taught to fear. From the day they were born, Greek women were taught
And it was ingrained in their heads to not rebel or speak out because they would be punished for their wrongdoings. You can see this same fearfulness in Ismene in Antigone. Ismene is the stereotypical greek women. She wants to please the powerful head above her, which is Creon, to stay out of trouble. When Antigone proposed the idea to Ismene that they should bury her other brother to save the family name. Ismene’s response was “What?” “You’d bury him-when a law forbids the city” (61)? Ismene couldn't fathom the idea that someone would want to go against Creon's word, after countless times he told them to never disobey him. Stated from the Gender pride as tragic flaw in Sophocles' Antigone, Owoeye exclaimed “Ismene is apparently more gender sensitive than Antigone drawing from her instant reaction to Antigone's proposal that they should not allow their brother's corpse to lie unburied on the ground” (Owoeye). Ismene declared that she would never disobey the city, but she is more afraid of what would happen to her and her sister as a