Marcy Frazier
Sophocles’ Antigone invites our admiration, and justifiably, for even her self professed criminality can seem sanctioned by the gods. Antigone refuses to play it safe by rejecting the “proper” place given to women within the deep recesses of the
oikos to which Athenian men relegated women circa 440 B.C.E. Determined to perform burial rites for her brother Polyneices, this courageous female risks it all – and in a public forum, no less. Indeed, even the entreaties of her fiancé, Haemon, hand firmly on the pulse of the demos in the streets, and the seer, Tiresias, cannot excuse Antigone’s defiance of male authority. These two men push back on the harsh punishment meted out to her precisely because she disobeys in the name of higher values.
Scholars have noted how adherence to these higher values and resistance to male authority have resulted in politically inflected interpretations of the play. Many published articles cast Antigone as “an icon and battleground of feminist theory”
(Goldhill 309). Others insist that Antigone is an icon of civil disobedience. Sheila Murnaghan, translator of the 2023 Norton edition of Antigone, recognizes a relatively recent shift in reception, explaining, “Most modern readers see her [Antigone] as the undisputed heroine of the play; her defiance of Creon is often identified with the modern concept of civil disobedience, according to which it is ethically justified, even required, to disobey unjust laws” (xvii). Decades earlier, with fresh images of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement clearly on her mind, Susan Wiltshire detects a similar connection, for “it is Antigone who is most often seen as the archetypal practitioner of civil disobedience” (29). Although admirers certainly have a point, that is, Antigone’s valiant attempts at challenging unjust laws do capture our imagination and invite intriguing comparisons to protestors past and present, this female figure operating at the height of Greek tragic drama ultimately fails as a practitioner of civil disobedience. Sophocles renders her an ineffectual activist by underscoring her ongoing isolation from others, her ambiguous status within the Theban community, and her otherworldly, death driven autonomy. Antigone’s nature and fate greatly differ from those of political figures who embraced and eagerly became one with their communities in combating injustice, and who recognized the value of a public facing position that could ignite, sustain and enshrine change.
In order to evaluate various perspectives on the nature of Antigone’s disobedience, one must first establish ground rules for the contested term civil disobedience, which the OED defines as an orchestrated group effort directed against established authority: “Rebellion of the populace against a governing power,” and, in later use, the “refusal to obey the laws, commands, etc., of a government or authority as part of an organized, nonviolent political protest or campaign” (“Civil Disobedience”). Writing in the 1970s, a period of tremendous civil disobedience within the U.S., Wiltshire argues against easy equivalencies by first laying out more specific criteria by which to judge Antigone’s refusal to conform. The practitioner of civil disobedience believes 1.) “there is a higher law than the laws of the land,” and 2.) one should obey the laws of the land if “he sees himself as an integral part of society and has a basic belief in the social order”; but 3.) when the two sets of laws
come in conflict with one another, the practitioner sees it as their duty “to obey the higher law and deliberately disobey the law of the land” (29). The authority to which Antigone appeals, and her determination to obey the unwritten laws established by the gods over the written laws insisted upon by her uncle Creon, suggest she meets these criteria.
However, Wiltshire’s three additional characteristics of civil disobedience appear less certain in the case of Antigone’s actions: 4.) the objective of the act(s) of civil disobedience is to induce social and/or political change via public protest; 5.) the perpetrator is willing to suffer the consequences, even punishment, for breaking the state’s laws; and, finally, 6.) this punishment may, in some cases, produce positive results by helping “educate others to the existing evil and […] cause others to join in the process” (29). Antigone readily accepts her punishment for transgressing the laws of the land. She refrains from using violence against Creon or others and, much to the chagrin of those who hope for a prolonged resistance, appears to embrace the prospect of death. Her cause or motivation for transgression appears more difficult to ascertain, as does the likelihood that her efforts will, at least in the immediate future, “help educate others” (29). Johan Tralau writes that Antigone is “inconsistent in her attachment to the bonds of philia, of the community of the ‘one womb’ that she wishes to protect” (377). The play does not suggest that her convictions serve to fuel others’ actions or warn the demos of the evil effects of state policies. Antigone is not present to hear Creon’s chilling pronouncement as an apparent prelude to tyrannical rule that “[w]hatever leader / the city appoints has to be obeyed / in matters big or small, just or unjust” (ll. 66971). Although Antigone’s very public refusal to abide by Creon’s edict could be construed by modern readers as one piece within a wider protest against the inflexibility of male authority, one can hardly argue that her fervor extends beyond immediate family.
An earlier public exchange between the king and his niece provides a fleeting instructional space, an opportunity for teaching quickly dashed by Antigone’s turn away from the potential power of a terrestrial kinship and toward an unfathomable and potentially fear inducing unknown. Within the stichomythic parrying that places the two momentarily on a similar plane, Creon’s ironic “The good and the bad don’t have equality” is met by Antigone’s tantalizing but evasive “Who knows? They might in the underworld” (ll. 52021). In shifting the argument away from a common human
connection and toward the unknown in which she prefers to settle, at least in her own mind, Antigone forsakes the womb and drives her project underground where the prospect of organizing to battle a common evil, or even understanding that evil, is less likely. Sophocles dramatizes a palpable tension between the individual and the collective, but he makes it difficult for the audience to pledge its complete allegiance to someone whose status is never clearly defined and whose values, while apparently admirable, become less so when accompanied by the desire to embrace a condition for which there can be no unifying thought or language.
As if to neutralize any hopes of civic unrest in the form of organized, meaningful action directed against the state, Sophocles intensifies and extends Antigone’s physical, mental, and rhetorical isolation from family and onlookers.
Creon’s biting words and his denial of her humanity in his refusal to name her (“You there, turning your head toward the ground, / do you admit you did it? Or deny it?”) are met with Antigone’s open admission: “Oh, I did it. I would not deny it” (ll. 441 43). Just after Creon offers the Chorus a rambling summary of the “outrages” committed by Antigone and Ismene in “planning this thing” (ll. 482, 490), Antigone asks dispassionately, “Anything you want besides killing me?” (l. 497). The modern reader naturally applauds these instances of youth’s eloquent and punchy challenge to authority’s longwinded and irrational squelching of dissent. Antigone’s admission, unaccompanied by any signs of contrition, willingness to right her wrong, or desire to model behavior out of a wish for others’ approval, amazes and confounds onlookers. Athenian audiences might have been struck by Antigone’s audacity, her unabashed testing of the age, sex, and power based hierarchy fundamental to their orderly society, and they might have perceived her challenging demeanor and tone as threatening rather than reassuring or inspiring. Long before civil disobedience acquired a positive cast, Sophocles portrays an Antigone who falsely believes she can go it alone. Or perhaps she lives only in the moment, testing the unwritten, fine line
between heroism and hubris.
In foregrounding the potential for solidarity in the figure of Ismene and dramatizing Antigone’s rejection of her sister’s offers of help, Sophocles creates a further isolated and even unsympathetic Antigone. Solidarity, which the OED defines
as the “fact or quality on the part of communities, etc., of being perfectly united or at one in some respect, especially in interests, sympathies, or aspirations,” must be achieved to some degree, even if not perfectly, so practitioners work toward their objective of inducing change beyond personal circumstance (“Solidarity,” 1. a.). Wiltshire describes Antigone as having “no hope, perhaps no desire for help from any source” (30, my emphasis). Antigone’s first words to Ismene suggest a promising start, an acknowledgment of a strong sororal bond borne of adversity and haunted by a common, if unnatural, family history: “Ismene, my sister, my second self! / Is there any evil born from Oedipus / that Zeus won’t make us both live through?” (ll. 1 3). Ismene’s clearsighted and well meaning perspective (“[W]e are women, / not suited by nature to fight against men”) and her plans to “ask the dead for their forgiveness / on the grounds that I am under constraint” appear to antagonize her sister (ll. 6162, 6566). Antigone responds not with placating words or attempts at winning Ismene to her cause (actions a diligent practitioner of civil disobedience might attempt in the name of a broader objective); instead, she immediately rejects Ismene’s balanced approach. Her abrupt response – “I won’t ask you to get involved” – serves as a prelude to her wholesale rejection of not only her sister’s perspective but also her very existence when Antigone later claims to be the last of her line (l. 69). Interactions with Ismene offer no evidence that Antigone’s ill conceived and self undermining disobedience will serve family or state in any meaningful way
As if verbal distancing were not enough to drive an irrevocable wedge between the sisters, Sophocles exacerbates the situation by revealing the death drive aspect of Antigone’s autonomy and the Chorus’s corresponding callousness. Tralau
notes, “the tragedy itself shows the self destructive nature of Antigone’s ‘laws’” (377). The Chorus casts few sympathetic glances in Antigone’s direction even as she begins her death walk, assessing her actions with the aloofness and harsh judgment characteristic of Theban elders. They offer no reassurance in response to Antigone’s moving catalogue of missed opportunities, and she, in turn, imagines herself marrying a river in Hades, thereby offering an unviable version of the sacred, life affirming and lifegiving institution. The only guarantee of the continued survival of the family unit
is emphasized as such: “No chance for me to be a bride, / no wedding song. / I will marry Acheron” (ll. 81416). Antigone has chosen her fate; the Chorus suggests martyrdom might offer consolation, an ironic possibility since death will prevent her from enjoying the fruits of any such legacy: “But what about the praise and fame / that follow you to death’s dark cave?” (ll. 81718). Separated from this group that offers no solace, yet still arrested by their judgment and its tone, she calls out the
Chorus while reminding them of the distinction between their place and hers: “You are mocking me! / Can’t you wait till I’m gone, / you richest men of the city?” (ll. 83941). Antigone bemoans her separation: “You I can call as witnesses: / how alone I am, with no grieving friends […] / in a horrible state, / neither living nor dead, / with no right to settle / either here or there” (ll. 84546, 84952). Antigone speaks in vain to her “platform,” a group of elderly men not particularly amenable to persuasion, and her call to action can have no hope at removing them from the comfort of their entrenched beliefs. Furthermore, she speaks of “a horrible state” they simply cannot comprehend, let alone learn from, as they assess her from their privileged position. Echoing Creon’s thought that Antigone has transgressed her appointed “station,” the
Chorus retorts: “Stepping past the limits of daring, / you stumbled, child, on the altar / of justice. Now you pay a penalty / passed down from your father” (ll. 85356). The very family that would buoy up the civil disobedience project instead haunts, distorts and belittles the cause. Antigone “stumbles” in thinking she can escape her role within the family and the broader fabric of humanity. Occupying a purgatory of sorts, she finds comfort in neither the world of the living nor that of the dead. Hovering in a perpetual state of unsettlement between clearly identifiable realms, Antigone has few if any opportunities to spread the word, assemble likeminded individuals, and bolster her cause.
Sophocles further underscores the folly of Antigone’s attempts at complete independence from human centered responsibility by allowing her one last chance at autonomy from those who would assess, judge, and sentence her: she reinvents herself as Niobe. This granddaughter of Zeus is doomed to suffer the consequences of eternal
petrification because she dared boast of her fertility to a goddess: “I’ve heard about / our Phrygian guest, / daughter of Tantalus, / and her sad, sad death / beside Mount Sipylus” (ll. 82327). Antigone recognizes a sister, another “second self” perhaps, envisioning a substitute for the sister she has foresworn. She observes their likeness (“Put to sleep by destiny, / I am just like her” [ll. 83233, my emphasis]), and she reads her own story in the erosion of the stony monument: “Encircled by a rocky growth / as if by a clinging vine, / she’s worn away by rain and snow / and soaks the ridges with her tears” (82831). Shocked by Antigone’s audacious, overly reductionist self comparison to Niobe’s figure, the Chorus immediately checks what they view as Antigone’s hubristic declaration by insisting on difference – Antigone is not like Niobe because she cannot claim a divine birth. In correcting Antigone’s attempts at a divinely attributed impunity, the Chorus condemns her and distances her even further from an imagined kinship that could bolster her case and cause.
As if to emphasize Antigone’s fatal inability or unwillingness to form solidarity with family or friends, Sophocles holds up Haemon as a more competent critic of Creon’s stubborn refusal to commute his niece’s harsh sentence. Antigone’s
fiancé quite naturally models the flexibility of “trees that bend [to] keep their branches safe,” performing a masterful sequence of rhetorical moves intended to sway his father (l. 713). With the deftness of a seasoned politician fully aware of his
constituents’ concerns, Haemon chooses his words carefully, harnessing the power of logos, pathos, and ethos to make his case. When flattery and appeals to father son bonds fail, Haemon reminds Creon, “Where you’re concerned, it is my role to see / how people react and whether they fault you. / […] I pick up what is secretly whispered” (ll. 68889, 692). A son sensitive to the murmurings of the polis (and therefore more aware of the potential disruptions in civic order), Haemon can more precisely gauge what must be done than the father who refuses to bend. Antigone’s disobedience appears less civil by contrast, or perhaps more self oriented rather than polis centered. She tells Creon that, although other Thebans may approve of her actions, “fear […] make[s] them hold their tongues,” and they “just keep their mouths shut” (ll. 505, 509). Beyond pointing out what is secretly thought, Antigone appears to have little interest in vocalizing others’ concerns or harnessing their latent energy to incite change.
If she appears to fall short as a true practitioner of civil disobedience (as is evident in her lack of interest in inducing sociopolitical change and her lack of concern that her demise will produce positive change for a broader group), what then
is Antigone? Do we simply echo the Chorus’s “There’s something holy in your devotion” and admire the sentiment, if not the final result? (l. 872). Or is Antigone nothing more than an ineffectual fanatic, a useless martyr? Does she matter, given her ostracism (or exorcism?) from the scene a full four hundred lines before Creon is left onstage and her speaking less than half the number of lines he utters? Scholars have attempted to provide answers to these questions. Bonnie Honig notes widely varying interpretations of Antigone’s significance: this “holy criminal” hovers at either end of a vast spectrum, “undecidably a great political hero or a self absorbed suicide incapable of caring for close kin,” situated as she is “half in and half out of the polis form and marked by that liminality” (326). And, according to Jennifer Wallace, Antigone transgresses written laws while being a young woman in a man’s world, and her resulting status – inhabiting otherness, betweenness, homelessness, or the “apolis” that means having no city and a status lower than that even of a slave – compromises her ability to enact civil disobedience that might ignite real, lasting change (12). In insisting “[s]he has lost the right to settle here above,” Creon simultaneously strips her of the multiple roles sister, niece, woman, polis dweller – that make her human (l. 890). In doing so, he denies her the agency civil disobedience requires, and he relegates her to a liminality that deprives her of cohesiveness or solidarity.
In addition to critical scholarship on Antigone, recent decisions in theater performance and production can help answer questions surrounding the nature of Antigone’s disobedience. The February 2024 Chicago Court Theater performance of
Antigone asked that we place Antigone firmly within the pantheon of (female) figures who, with equal fervor, protested unjust laws during recent historical movements. An audible mix of overlapping voices emphasizes the communal forces accompanying civic unrest. As Chris Jones, reviewer for the Chicago Tribune, writes, “We hear a recording of the director’s own relatives discussing a woman refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Texas in the 1940s” (“Antigone”). The Court Theater director’s use of this recording generates the context of politically inflected disobedience, even before
the first lines of Sophocles’ play are spoken. Ismene appears as a flowerchild, an advocate of peace, love, and harmony, who ultimately returns to the stage in the play’s final moments. In placing her within the counterculture of the 1960s, the Court
Theater’s representation of Antigone’s sister might just quench the audience’s desire for a more optimistic end fueled by hopes that the surviving sibling will live on to influence others. Ismene is presented as the true practitioner of civil disobedience who could build on Antigone’s legacy by using a more evenhanded and future focused approach than her sister. In any case, reminders of the communal imperative of civil disobedience, whether communicated by family based historical footage or by glimpses of protests in the 1960s, invite us to consider intriguing similarities (and, in doing so, inadvertently reveal dramatic differences) between historical actors like Rosa Parks and dramatic figures like Antigone and Ismene.
Antigone’s fate communicates the patriarchal state’s frantic attempts to control disobedience perceived as a serious threat to the status quo. In the midst of persuading Creon to bend a bit and change his mind, Haemon becomes the most convincing
champion of his bride to be: “The city grieves to see that girl facing / a shameful death she hardly deserves, / when she performed the most glorious acts” (ll. 69395). He goes on to ask Creon: “Shouldn’t golden honor be her reward?” (l. 699). Creon answers by insisting that “rebels” should not be “honored” (l. 730). Sophocles partially answers Haemon’s question by allowing Antigone to choose her method of death against the wishes of her uncle to finally contain her; suicide by hanging
becomes her final autonomous act, but only within the stony tomb the state has constructed to contain her influence. Antigone’s sentencing – originally death by stoning, switched by Creon to isolated death by starvation – serves its purpose for complacent Athenians who desire to see any perceived threats to democracy dutifully punished and kept out of sight. Nevertheless, although this measure checks her miasma, it ultimately, ironically, guarantees her a lasting fame. For Athenian
audiences, far from deserving honor for her “glorious acts,” Antigone lives on as the embodiment of a warning: to refuse the solidarity that binds citizens to each other, to reject one’s terrestrial community, and to prioritize death over life poses a threat as dire as that of tyranny to the health and cohesiveness of a thriving polis.