OCR Theatre: Which Playwright Deals Most Effectively With Women (Bacchae, Oedipus Rex)

Oedipus Rex: Women in General

All women in the play are off stage other than Jocasta. The women mentioned in the play are: Jocasta, Merope, Ismene, Antigone (Spinx) . There also the ordinary women of Thebes.

Women form part of the crowd in the opening of the play. The chorus (city elders) speak on their behalf.

They describe women's children dying during childbirth due to the plague. The women present Oedipus with the problem and beg him for aid.

The chorus stares: "The city dies. Its children lie unpitied and inlamented on the ground, infected with death; meanwhile, wives and white-haired mothers come from all over the city to the altar-ground, crying for deliverance from the suffering that destroys them."

CRITIC: Winnington-Ingram points out convincingly: "all Sophoclean female characters are placed firmly within the context of their femininity."

Jocasta: Wife and Mother of Oedipus

Jocasta allows us to see the way in which women were viewed as possessions in society as Jocasta is given to Oedipus as a prize - she is objectified - and has limited rights.

Women were viewed as children in the eyes of Ancient Greek law.

Sophocles illustrates Jocasta's vulnerability, and also her supportive nature towards Oedipus. This highlights the stereotypical and idealised wife who was fragile, modest, doting, and obedient.

She facilitates the necessity of self-assertion for Oedipus.

This role spans throughout the play, prophecy and her life as Oedipus' mother and wife.

With the arrival of the past prophecy that her and Laius's son would be destined to kill his father, Jocasta is forced to abandon her child to die in their attempt to evade the prophecy.

A mothers first instinct is typically to protect her child at all cost. However, Jocasta has to go against her nature by putting her child in danger to protect her husband.

This instance thus proves that a wifes first priority was expected to be her husband.

Jocasta is used like and object in this case, as when her husband still dies, her ownership is taken over by her husbands killer and her son.

Despite being the queen of thebes, Jocasta has little to say on any occurrence in her life, and her lines are few.

Women's main role was their childbearing capability. The chorus introduced Jocasta as belonging to Oedipus and the bearer of his offspring.

Exodus

The insignificance and expectations of women in society are presented in the Exodus.

In the Exodus Oedipus says: "As for my sons, you need not care for them. They are men, they will find some way to live. But my poor daughters, who have shared my table, who never before have been parted from their father, take care of them Creon; do this for men."

We see women are seen as vulnerable and defenseless in society, and Oedipus laments the struggles their future will hold.

Jocasta: Submission to Laius

Jocasta exclaims: "my child - poor baby! - it was my child that died first"

Her strong emotional outburst exerts the fact that the decision made by her husband for her child to be killed has continued throughout her life to cause her great emotional pain.

The exclamation "poor baby" reveals her pity for her small, innocent and vulnerable child. It also implies she did not want to let her child die.

However, Jocasta is trapped by social values and the virtue of female submissiveness and obedience to masculine authority.

By revealing Jocasta's ever-present guilt over a decision made many years ago, Sophocles argues that the need to voice one's own opinions and ideas and reveals that self-advocacy is a desire shared by all.

However, Jocasta has to suppress her own opinions in order to emphasise her allegiance to her husband.

Jocasta: Submission to Oedipu s

Jocasta's compliance is seen not only in her relationship with Laius, but with Oedipus as well.

Through Oedipus' search for the truth, Jocasta appears eager to please him and answers every question he has. He commands her to "not ask" questions and to "tell [him] how Laius looked, and tell [him] how old he was". We see his dominant and commanding nature towards his wife.

CRITIC: Gordon Kirkwood notes: "Critics have pointed out that Sophocles' Jocasta, in her role as a peacemaker and then as a would-be comforter acts like a mother to Oedipus" before the truth is revealed.

CRITIC: similarly, Thomas Gould comments: [Jocasta's] tone is appropriate for a wife, sister, queen and for a mother."

Bacchae: Women in General

Women in Greek society were similar to slaves in many ways.

CRITIC: Kamen points out: "Women in Athenian society, like slaves who were confined to the oikos, were kept out of public life as much as possible."

Thus, Bacchae can be interpreted by the school of feminist scholars as a text of female liberation.

Despite the women's role to stay indoors and be submissive, they have all been released from their homes by Dionysus and are dancing in the woods and on Cithaeron.

Due to the trend of male dominance in Greek society, women were forced to endure oppression and bore a social stigma which led to their vulnerability to becoming Dionysus' target.

However, this was not a conscious decision on the women's behalf, instead being magically driven to this wild and frenzied state by the god.

The respectable Theban women in the play have unwillingly become Maenads, the frenzied worshippers of Dionysus.

In essence, the Theban woman could be argued to have fostered Dionysian insanity through their subconcious longing to rebel against the patriarchal social norms.

There is a great deal of emphasis placed on how they have left behind their traditional roles, which men see as them going against their nature.

For example, they are suckling wild animals like wolves while their children remain hungry at home.

CRITIC: M. Goggin argued that: "Pentheus is struggling to preserve gender norms and undo the disruption caused by their madness."

In Bacchae, Dionysus causes the Thaban maenads to abandon their household tasks and the domestic sphere. This causes a disruption to normative activities that Pentheus views as peculiar and alarming.

The maenads disrupt their normative trajectory, leaving their homes for rituals in the wild, likening them to wild animals themselves.

Thus, the maenads not only disrupt the institution of marriage, but also reject the men of the polis permanently.

Having left the oikos the maenads further upset societal gender roles, violently triumphing over men.

INFERENCE: Thus, we can argue that Theban women were dissatisfied with their positions in the community.

Women confined and isolated by men would undoubtedly yearn for an espace - which Dionysus provides - finding the oppression too much to endure without entertaining fantasises of freedom.

This could be why women were considered more prone to madness, emotional outbursts and a general lack of control of themselves in Greek society.

Their hope to emerge from the shackles of sexism made women vulnerable to manifestations like Dionysus and the liberating ecstasy he offered.

Dionysus was not being kind though, as his reasoning was due to anger over the women for their demeaning gossip which challenged his existence as a god. Thus, he took advantage of their vulnerability, seeing it as an opportunity to teach them the lesson that mortals must respect the immortals.

Dionysus: "I've stung them with madness...The whole female seed of Thebes, I've driven frenzied out of house and home."

Bacchae: Agave

CRITIC: Kamen notes "Unlike men, who gained honour through public performance of their citizen rights and obligations...women did so by remaining nearly invisible in all realms by the religious."

However, Agave - in her madness - attempts to gain honour in the killing of Pentheus as she thinks she has killed a lion with her bear hands. This overturns the gender norms of women, showing her disruption in society.

Agave demands public recognition for her hunting prowess in a way that a man would, rather than remaining, as Kamen says, "invisible" as a women should.

Agave is described as: "foaming at the mouth and rolling her eyes in all directions, not in her right mind, possessed by the Bacchic god" as she kills Pentheus.

She calls herself and the women: "fellow hunters, comrade in the kill, crowned in victory". This sounds like a victory at war, far outside the role of a woman. She calls his head a "trophy" too which is again a male word.

She asks: "Do you praise me?" and "the great deeds have I achieved, deeds that are clear in this prize."

We see her damning public recognition like a man for engaging in a male pursuit.

She says: "I left the shuttles by my loom, and have come to something greater: hunting wild animals with my bear hands." She totally overturns the stereotypes for women, leaving behind her loom.

Bacchae: Critic Patterson (1991)

According to Patterson, the play explores the "good and evil" of both "outer freedom", which he defines in terms of the power exerted over other people, and "inner freedom" which is freedom of the mind.

He classifies the women of Bacchae as symbols of the uncontrollable, non-rational parts of the mind, set free by Dionysus, even as he liberates them physically from their place in Theban society.

He argues that the freedom on the maenads is too extensive and turns loose the dark inner forces of the mind which leads to Pentheus's death.

In his perspective, the play explores the necessity and also dangers of females personal freedom.

Bacchae: Chorus

The chorus, unlike the Maends, celebrates Dionysus of their own accord. They are female worshippers he picked up on his travels in Asia.

Their presence in Thebes would have been disconcerting for Pentheus and the men of Thebes.

They are strong, powerful women with the power of the god behind them. These women are outside the patriarchal power structure of Thebes.

The Thebans and chorus are physically separate for most of the play, with the chorus remaining in thebes to comment on events, while the Theban women are in the wilderness and Cithaeron carrying out religious rites.

The Lydian bacchants appear to be devoted to Dionysus willingly, while the Theban maenads have been driven to madness and forced to worship.

CRITIC: Cole suggests the chorus have voluntarily engaged with Dionysian worship and their madness is "the positive ritual experience of identification with the god.

CRITIC: Dodds on the other hand shows that the madness of the Theban women is a "painful affliction" which is a divine punishment for their failures to recognise the god.