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Gender in aeneid
The portrayal of women in the aeneid
Aeschylus the oresteia roles of women
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Hi Haley, indeed this week Euripides story remains one of my favorites. Each page of the book was exciting and intriguing. From my comprehension, Euripides by Bacchae depicts the old tradition versus the modern movement. The old traditions desire stability resistance to change manifested in character Pentheus. Alternatively, the new school of thought is peculiar and boundless conveyed in Dionysus character. Interestingly, Dionysus may exercise his power not through force but deception, lies, and charm. Although Dionysus could have used his physical strength, he calculated Pentheus death. About the women in the story, it reminded me of pre-women's liberation movement. Before the women’s movement they lacked the autonomy to make their own decisions.
Women have traditionally been known as the less dominant sex. Through history women have fought for equal rights and freedom. They have been stereotyped as being housewives, and bearers and nurturers of the children. Only recently with the push of the Equal Rights Amendment have women had a strong hold on the workplace alongside men. Many interesting characters in literature are conceived from the tension women have faced with men. This tension is derived from men; society, in general; and within a woman herself. Two interesting short stories, “The Yellow Wall-paper and “The Story of an Hour, “ focus on a woman’s plight near the turn of the 19th century. This era is especially interesting because it is a time in modern society when women were still treated as second class citizens. The two main characters in these stories show similarities, but they are also remarkably different in the ways they deal with their problems and life in general. These two characters will be examined to note the commonalities and differences. Although the two characters are similar in some ways, it will be shown that the woman in the “The Story of an Hour” is a stronger character based on the two important criteria of rationality and freedom.
The setting of both stories reinforces the notion of women's dependence on men. The late 1800's were a turbulent time for women's roles. The turn of the century brought about revolution, fueled by the energy and freedom of a new horizon…but it was still just around the bend. In this era, during which both short stories were published, members of the weaker sex were blatantly disregarded as individuals, who had minds that could think, and reason, and form valid opinions.
In what is noted as one of Plato first accounts, we become acquainted with a very intriguing man known as Socrates; a man, whose ambition to seek knowledge, inevitably leaves a significant impact on humanity. Most of all, it is methodologies of attaining this knowledge that makes him so mesmerizing. This methodology is referred to as Socratic irony, in literature. In any case, I will introduce the argument that Plato's Euthyphro is extremely indicative of this type of methodology, for the reason being that: Socrates's portrays a sense of intellectual humility.
Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ The Bacchae are indubitably plays of antitheses and conflicts, and this condition is personified in the manifestation of their characters, each completely opposed to the other. Both tragedians reveal tensions between two permanent and irreconcilable moral codes; divine law represented by Antigone and Dionysus and human law represented by Creon and Pentheus. The central purpose is evidently the association of law which has its consent in political authority and the law which has its consent in the private conscience, the association of obligations imposed on human beings as citizens and members of state, and the obligations imposed on them in the home as members of families. Both these laws presenting themselves in their most crucial form are in direct collision. Sophocles and Euripides include a great deal of controversial material, once the reader realizes the inquiries behind their work. Inquiries that pertain to the very fabric of life, that still make up the garments of society today.
In “Oedipus the King,” an infant’s fate is determined that he will kill his father and marry his mother. To prevent this heartache his parents order a servant to kill the infant. The servant takes pity on the infant and gives him to a fellow shepherd, and the shepherd gives him to a king and queen to raise as their own. The young prince learns of the prophecy and flees from his interim parents because he is afraid that he is going to succeed. The young prince eventually accomplishes his prophecy without even knowing he is doing it. He murders his father and marries his mother unknowingly. While it may seem to some that Oedipus was destined to carry out his fate, it is also true that Oedipus’ personality led him to his fate.
In ancient myths it always seems that for the most part, mothers adore their male child and do not have the same importance for the female child. However, this is not the case for Agave, mother of Pentheus. In “Bacchae,” Agave is so caught up on a curse brought upon her by her nephew Dionysus that she completely loses sight of what is truly important, her son. In the end Agave ends up chopping the head off her own son, a twist to the everyday myth. In “Demeter and Persephone,” although Persephone is a female, it seems as though Demeter cares and protects her daughter more than Agave ever did for her "male" child. Agave doesn't even talk about her daughter Epirus; another hint of the importance of females in ancient myths. Unlike Agave, we have Frigg, from “Bacchae,” who goes to the end of the world like Demeter to make sure that they have done everything in their power to keep Balder and Persephone safe and out of harms way. Frigg, Balder's mother and Demeter, Persephone's mother, are both powerful mothers who stop at nothing to ensure the safety and protection of their children. They are to Balder and Persephone as a bear is to her cubs when someone messes with them. When it comes to being dedicated, loveable, and selfless, Demeter and Frigg are better mothers than Agave.
In Sophocles’ play, Antigone, the main character uses rhetoric to effectively persuade her audiences to sympathize with her. In the play, Antigone’s brother, Polyneices, dies a traitor to the Theban people. The king, Creon, decrees that no one is to bury the traitor despite the necessity of burial for proper passing into the afterlife. Believing that Creon’s decree is unjust, Antigone buries her brother. When she is brought to the king, Antigone uses this speech in defense of her actions. In the speech, she uses allusion, diction, and particular sentence structure to increase the effectiveness of her argument.
...trated this by betraying the trust that people had in men and the gods with his foolish and reckless action against Cadmus and his family. Dionysus refuted rational thinking by letting his emotions for revenge stand in the way of his contemplating how a god should behave. In doing all the things Dionysus has destroyed the ideal way one would expect a god to conduct their self. Euripides portrays a Dionysus that single handily destroys all the cultural values of Hellenic Greece; however, Euripides is able to capture the changing values of his audience and pave the way for the culture of Hellenistic Greece to begin to dominate societal thought.
In The Bacchae, Euripedes portrays the character of Pentheus as an ignorant, stubborn, and arrogant ruler. These character flaws accompanied with his foolish decisions set the stage for his tragic downfall. Pentheus' blatant disregard to all warnings and incidents, which prove that Dionysus is truly a god, lead him to his own death. In the end, his mistakes are unforgiving and his punishment is just.
First to understand why this story is critical to empowering women who wished to remain tied to their domestic roots, we need to look at the limitations imposed upon their resistance. Within the public sphere women had the option of peaceful protest which allowed for them to sway the political system that had oppressed them for so long. Unfortunately public protest could not change the oppression that took place in the private sphere of domesticity. We can see in the story that Mother has no intere...
The Bacchae finally calls into question the very nature of what it means to be a citizen, in this case particularly an Athenian citizen. Just as he does gender, Dionysus complicates the concept of a citizen and exists in some liminal halfway point between citizen and foreigner. In the Bacchae, Dionysus is both Theban – a cousin of Pentheus’ – and a stranger, coming to Thebes from Asia (Euripides, Bacchae WHEREVER DIONYSUS COMES IN FROM ASIA AND SAYS THIS). His foreignness is largely emphasised in the Bacchae; he has to be introduced to Thebes, enters the city from beyond Greek borders; he excites Pentheus’ Athenian xenophobia (Euripides, Bacchae CITE). That Dionysus can be simultaneously foreign and Theban draws out an issue in citizenship that he similarly drew out in gender; how inherent is
"Bacchae", by Euripides, talks about Dionysus (also called Bromius, Bacchus, or Evius), son of Zeus and a mortal woman, Semele, who came back to his homeland of Thebes to show everyone that he was a real god. His mother was killed while giving birth to him and her sisters spread rumors that she lied about her pregnancy. Therefore his family does not know about his existence. Dionysus's cousin Pentheus was not convinced that he was god and argued with him in spite of everyone around telling him to stop fighting with Dionysus. At the end of the play, his own mother killed Pentheus while she was at the state of being possessed by Bacchus; not knowing it was her son. Why does Pentheus get killed? This essay discusses three possible explanations for that.
"The Clouds" by Aristophanes - Relevant in Today's World "The Clouds" by Aristophanes, is a play centrally concerned with education. Aristophanes employs satire to illustrate his conservative beliefs. It is intended to show readers that in the tendency to philosophical subtleties lies the neglection of the real needs of the Athenians. According to Aristophanes, philosophical speculation only acts to shake the established foundations of accepted religion, gods, and ideals of morality.
In the play Antigone, by Sophocles, it is greatly apparent just within the first few exchanges between Ismene and Antigone that there are various social issues surrounding the women in ancient Greece. The play raises many gender and socially related issues especially when looking at the contextual background of the playwright and the representation of the women within the play. When the characters of the first scene begin their analog, it is important to note what they are actually saying about each other and what their knowledge of their own social status is. The audience is first introduced to Antigone who we later learn is the antagonist of the play as she rebels against the protagonist, Creon. Her sister, Ismene, is the second character the audience is introduced to, hears of Antigone's plan to bury their brother's body in the first scene. Ismene’s actions and words give the reader the hint that her sister’s behavior is not usual, "so fiery" and "so desperate" are the words used to describe Antigone's frame of mind. At this very early point in the play the reader discovers that Antigone is determined to carry out her mission to bury her beloved brother. However, she is in no position that gives her the rights as a woman, sister, or even future queen to make her own decisions and rebel. Instead, her decision to bury her brother demonstrates her loyalty to her family, the gods, and to all women. Her motivation for those decisions will end up driving her far more than that of what the laws set by Creon have implemented. She shows no fear over disobeying the king and later says about the punishment of death "I will lie with the one I love and loved by him"(Sophocles, 2). Throughout the play the reader can see the viewpoint of an obedient woman, a rebellious woman, and the social norms required for both of them.
Both stories show feminism of the woman trying to become free of the male dominance. Unfortunately, the woman are not successful at becoming free. In the end, the two women’s lives are drastically