If the boundaries for women never
evolved neither would society. The story of Antigone is about a young girl who
stands up for what she believes in even if death is her consequence. Like
Antigone, Madea too puts her foot down and demands her place in society. These two women are unlike any of their
time. They do not for the play their society’s stereotypical role for women of
their day and are not afraid of the consequences their actions receive.
Antigone wants to bury her brother
Polyneices, but according to King Creon that is a crime punishable and most
certainly inevitable by death. Antigone does not care however. She thinks it is
only right to bury her brother and does not care what happens, “But I will bury
him; and if I must die, I say that this crime is Holy: I shall lie down With
him in death, and I shall be as dear To him as he is to me”(Fitts, 192). She knows exactly what she is getting
herself in to but she does not care. Her passion is to stand for what she thinks
is right, and she knows that burying her brother is exactly that. Death is not
a factor and she goes through with the deed. Unfortunately Anitgone’s fight
ends with the death from her own hands. She commits suicide after being sent
away to live her life imprisoned in a dark cave excluded from her only
immediate family left, Ismene, her sister, her husband to be and her hometown.
In her time the women were suppose to be quiet and listen to what ever men told
them to do. It was unheard of for a girl to stand up to her husband never mind
the king. She thought for herself and only herself.
Medea struggles wit her husband’s,
Jayson’s, decision to remarry his new wife, the daughter of King Creon. She
comes up with a gruesome plan to kill her children out of spite, and Jayson’s
soon to be bride. She sends a dress of poison to her and she dies almost
instantaneously after putting it on. Along side of her, her father, the king
dies also. Then Medea completes the act with the murders of her own children.
When Jayson confronts Medea, she rides off on a chariot provided by her father,
the god of the sun. Medea is a
mother. Stereotypically she is supposed to watch over her children. She is
supposed to do the housework and raise her family. She does not fit the
guidelines of a nurturing mother at all. Her hunger for revenge out ways the
value of her children’s life.
Although
both these women lived in a time where women with opinions and voices were
unheard of they made sure they were heard loud and clear. Antigone and Medea
did not fit the stereotype of women in their day. They were far more evolved
then the women of their time and much braver then most women today.
