Woman's Third Face: A Psycho/Social Reconsideration of Sophocles' Antigone

I. Introduction

The heroine of Sophocles' Antigone has been evaluated over the years almost exclusively in terms of her conflict with Creon, which is usually taken to represent a more universal opposition between the interests and values of the polis and those of the family or kinship group in fifth-century Athens. This approach has yielded numerous excellent studies that have significantly furthered our understanding of the often differing interests of these two groups in Sophocles' day and the playwright's concern with them. But to view Antigone exclusively in terms of this social conflict is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons. In the first place, it tends to reproduce the narrow official viewpoint of the male polis, to whom Antigone's contempt for the decree of Creon would have been most important and most threatening. Moreover, the positive results of evaluating the emotional dynamics within the family of Oedipus itself, i.e., of a less civic and more personal approach toward Antigone, her siblings, and her uncle, are largely foregone by such criticism, despite what seems to me to be an additional, universal concern of Sophoclean drama with exploring family relationships from the perspectives of both male and female characters.¹ In addition, although definition of Antigone's kinship group and its relationship to the state must ground any accurate interpretation of the play, it fails on its own both to explain the drama's emotional and tragic power and to account for a troublesome group of apparent inconsistencies between the perceived "kinship" ethics of Antigone and some of her behavior. While Antigone's loyal commitment to res familiaris, as opposed to res publica, is generally acknowledged to have been the foundation of the unwritten law she cites to justify Polynices' burial, such loyalty is difficult to reconcile with three other prominent moments in the play when her treatment of kin falls rather short of expectations.

The first and most incriminating instance in the eyes of most critics is Antigone's rapid denunciation, at lines 69ff.² and again at 536ff., of her sister Ismene, who cannot bring herself to help bury Polynices in defiance of Creon's edict.³ When Ismene explains her reasons, Antigone does not attempt to argue with or persuade her sister, but rejects her immediately and permanently (69–70).⁴ She torments Ismene, who has just promised to keep Antigone's plans secret, by insisting she broadcast her actions to everyone (86–87). When her crime is discovered by Creon, she condemns her sister's inaction with the old words vs. deeds dichotomy (543). The heroine's adamant devotion to Polynices does not seem to extend to Ismene, despite the fact that Ismene is indisputably a bona fide kin group member. Male kin are arguably more "valuable" than female in Greek society, since female kin join other families upon their marriage; yet Antigone does not seem to subscribe to this view at the opening of the play and, in any case, it fails to account for her abrupt reversal of feeling.

In addition, it is difficult to account for Antigone's utter lack of regard for Haemon, Creon's son and her own fiancé, whose devotion to his bride-to-be will be tragically proven by his suicide at the drama's end. Her indifference to Haemon (without exception if we attribute, with Lloyd Jones and Wilson 1990bad loc., Sommerstein 1990–93, and now Knox 1996.78–80,⁵ [572] to Ismene),⁶ and her corresponding overvaluation of Polynices have been variously viewed as part and parcel of her excessive singularity of purpose (so Else 1976, Nussbaum 1986.64–67) or as an important element of Sophocles' portrait of Antigone as the male-threatening "bad female" (so Sourvinou Inwood 1990.17–21); otherwise it has been largely ignored. The very fact that one or the other sister speaks the line indicates that an expression of affection or concern for Haemon by a female character in the play would not have been deemed inappropriate.

Finally, Antigone poses a long-famous dilemma for critics in...