Sophocles: The role of Women in the Sophoclean tragedy.
Every Society differentiates among its members on the basis of sex and almost everyone assigns women an inferior status. Western cultures have taught for generations that certain learned traits are natural to males, like bravery, aggressiveness, independence, and rationality. Female stereotypes include passivity, and emotionalism. Men were expected to go into the world, while women where expected to remain in the home. Throughout most of the countries history women had second class citizenship. .
In all the ages of ages, men have regarded women as inferiors to themselves and have robbed them of their co equal rights. Women were treated like property. A wives duty was managing the household, and they were to provide a male heir in order to keep the family's property. In most of the time, if a family didn't have a male then the property belonged to the daughter. To keep the property they had to be given husbands the women had many troubles though, with the role of being a wife. Women were transferred from husband to husband. Men were scared that it could bring in outsiders, and mess up the preservation of their property.
In the Sophocles, women were treated with no respect. Women couldn't express their opinions on how the world should be. .
"We"ll have no woman's law here, while I live." Creon said when Antigone thought we all had a duty to the dead. Page.140. Women were to remain indoors to superintend the servants who worked indoors and to receive the incoming. They were to manage the household. In today's times women who manage the household were called homemakers.
Also in the Sophocles tragedy women were to keep quiet and to obey there kings, or husbands orders. In the story of Antigone, Antigone disobeyed Creons orders not to bury her brother, Polynices. .
Her sister tells her," We are Women, it is not for us to fight against men, our rulers are stronger than we, and we must obey in this, or in worse than this.