The play The Bacchae by Euripides tells us many things about how the Greeks experienced and exercised concepts of religion, authority, family, knowledge, and morality. In this play a mortal man defies the wishes of a young god. Now this man, Pentheus, is not just any man he is the king of Thebes as well as the young god’s first cousin. The god, Dionysus, is the son of Greek God Zeus and a mortal women, Semele. She is also one of the daughters of Pentheus’ grandfather, Cadmus. The king does not want to allow the citizens of Thebes to religiously worship the god and this is where the problem lays between the two. This essay will look at the concepts of family, especially the role of women, religion, and morality within the play itself. When it comes to the concept of family, women play a prominent role in The Bacchae. As seen early in the …show more content…
Surely the indulgences of the orgies in the forest break from the more silent and sheltered position of respectable Greek women. This is a challenge to traditional Greek ideology manufactured by Dionysus alone. Dionysus muddies the notion of gender further with his manner and appearance, violating the ideals of masculinity in the femininity of Dionysus in his cult along with the symbolic gender reversals in Greek tradition. Pentheus says to Dionysus, “Well stranger your body is not without beauty, to women’s taste, at least, which is your reason for being in Thebes. Those locks of yours are long, not a wrestler’s, then, and they ripple down your cheek, most alluringly” (454-458). Pentheus tone here is more suitable for an ill-mannered brute than a king. Later in the play there is a reversal when the young king dresses himself in fawn skin and curls highlighting the irony that makes the gender cross-over worthy of being
Euripdies' The Bacchae is known for its celebration of women's rebellion and patriarchial overthrow, claims which hold truth if not supremely. The Thebans, along with other women, pursue the rituals and culture of Dionysus’s cult which enacts their rebellion against men and the laws of their community. However, this motion to go aginst feminine norms is short lived as they lose power. When Agave comes to her epiphany, Dionysus is the one who is triumphant over Pentheus's death, not Agave or her sisters These women must be punished for their rebellion against both men and community. This female power is weakened and the rebellion muted in order to bring back social order and also to provide the story with a close. Female rebellion actually becomes oppressed through The Bacchae due to its conseqences and leading events of the play. This alludes to the message that women who do not follow traditional roles of femininity are subject to the destruction of an established society.
Yet, despite the fact that no two women in this epic are alike, each—through her vices or virtues—helps to delineate the role of the ideal woman. Below, we will show the importance of Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa, Clytaemestra, and Penelope in terms of the movement of the narrative and in defining social roles for the Ancient Greeks. Before we delve into the traits of individual characters, it is important to understand certain assumptions about women that prevailed in the Homeric Age. By modern standards, the Ancient Greeks would be considered a rabidly misogynistic culture. Indeed, the notoriously sour Boetian playwright Hesiod-- who wrote about fifty years before Homer-- proclaimed "Zeus who thunders on high made women to be evil to mortal men, with a nature to do evil (Theogony 600).
The Bacchae indicates that Dionysus is not concerned with morality since his way of controlling people and seeking revenge is viewed as corrupt. Dionysus is a god born of a mortal mother, therefore the people of Thebes deny he’s a god. He sought revenge against those who denied him as a god by murdering and driving them insane. Pentheus denied his status as a god and failed to honor him as such. Dionysus got revenge by forcing Pentheus’s mother to kill his own son. The women of Thebes denied his status as a god, therefore, he drove them insane. The way the women worshipped Dionysus is viewed as immoral and cruel since they are controlled without their own will. Dionysus is the god of wine; wine represents celebration and festivities. Although wine can help people relieve their worries, it can cause them to experience drunkenness. Once someone is drunk they can be destructive and lose control of their thoughts and judgment. Once they are controlled by Dionysus they do not always know the difference between what is
The contrast between men versus women is an important opposition in both plays. The women in the Greek society have no control of their life; the men are in control (Barlow 159). In The Bacchae Dionysus underminded the Greek society point view on women and empowers them. Pentheus is furious about Dionysus; he states in this first speech to his Grandfather Cadmus and Tiresias that the women have betrayed their houses to go off into the mountains to dance to Dionysus and are committing sexual acts (Bacchae 217-224). Pentheus is offended that an “effeminate looking stranger” has come into his land and is giving freedom to the women (353). There is a binary opposition between the way Greek society and Pentheus are treating the women (men) versus the way Dionysus treats them (women).
In classical Greek literature the subject of love is commonly a prominent theme. However, throughout these varied texts the subject of Love becomes a multi-faceted being. From this common occurrence in literature we can assume that this subject had a large impact on day-to-day life. One text that explores the many faces of love in everyday life is Plato’s Symposium. In this text we hear a number of views on the subject of love and what the true nature of love is. This essay will focus on a speech by Pausanius. Pausanius’s speech concentrates on the goddess Aphrodite. In particular he looks at her two forms, as a promoter of “Celestial Love” as well as “Common Love.” This idea of “Common Love” can be seen in a real life context in the tragedy “Hippolytus” by Euripides. This brings the philosophical views made by Pausanius into a real-life context.
Some of the earliest recorded literature presents this conflict between family and state. Homer’s novel, The Odyssey, deals with the issue at a time of war. Sophocles also addresses the conflict in two of his famous plays, Oedipus the King and Antigone. In the Greek language, this is a conflict between oikos1 and polis. 2 This essay will present the separation of loyalty between oikos and polis as is evident in early literature and in decisions of today.
Many different interpretations can be derived from themes in Euripides's The Bacchae, most of which assume that, in order to punish the women of Thebes for their impudence, the god Dionysus drove them mad. However, there is evidence to believe that another factor played into this confrontation. Because of the trend of male dominance in Greek society, women suffered in oppression and bore a social stigma which led to their own vulnerability in becoming Dionysus's target. In essence, the Thebian women practically fostered Dionysian insanity through their longing to rebel against social norms. Their debilitating conditions as women prompted them to search for a way to transfigure themselves with male qualities in order to abandon their social subordination.
In this essay, I hope to provide answers to how the actions of Hippolytus and Phaedra relate to the gods, whether or not the characters concern themselves with the reaction of the gods to their behavior, what the characters expect from the gods, how the gods treat the humans, and whether or not the gods gain anything from making the humans suffer. Before we can discuss the play, however, a few terms need to be defined. Most important would be the nature of the gods. They have divine powers, but what exactly makes the Greek gods unique should be explored. The Greek gods, since they are anthropomorphic, have many of the same characteristics as humans.
In this essay I will examine the war-of the-sexes taking place in The Eumenides, the final play of The Oresteia. The plot of The Eumenides pits Orestes and Apollo (representing the male gods and, to a certain extent, male values in general) against the ghost of Clytemnestra and the Furies (equally representative of female values.) Of more vital importance, however, is whether Athene sides with the males or females throughout the play.
In Euripides’ play The Bacchae, the ideals that were the foundation of Greek culture were called into question. Until early 400B.C.E. Athens was a society founded upon rational thinking, individuals acting for the good of the populace, and the “ideal” society. This is what scholars commonly refer to as the Hellenic age of Greek culture. As Athens is besieged by Sparta, however, the citizens find themselves questioning the ideals that they had previously lived their lives by. Euripides’ play The Bacchae shows the underlying shift in ideology of the Greek people from Hellenic (or classical), to Hellenistic; the god character Dionysus will be the example that points to the shifting Greek ideology.
Atwood is playing with two levels of myth here: the Homeric myth of ‘faithful Penelope’ and cultural myths about women as either submissive or domestic (Howell 9). After marriage Penelope spends most of her time alone in boredom and Eurycelia, former nurse of Odysseus, often reminds her duties as wife by saying, “So you can have a nice big son for Odysseus. That’s your job” (63). Furthermore, Atwood recounts the vulnerability of alone woman in the male dominated world. To grab opportunity of being king, a number of suitors assemble at Ithaca, to marry Penelope, and she thinks, “They all were vultures when they spot the dead cow: one drops, then another, until finally every vulture for miles around is tearing up the carcass” (103). Moreover, Atwood argues about the partiality of sexual of freedom along with the vexed relationship between man and woman, as the former can do sex with any other woman such as Odysseus’s affairs with the goddess and whores, but the woman is restricted to marriage like Penelope. The foremost fatuous allegation makes on Penelope is about her faithfulness and loyalty for her husband Odysseus, and she defends herself from any sexual conduct in the chapter, “slanderous gossip”. The death of Amphinomus, the politest suitor among all, leaves the question of marital infidelity among the genders.
Women’s lives are represented by the roles they either choose or have imposed on them. This is evident in the play Medea by Euripides through the characters of Medea and the nurse. During the time period which Medea is set women have very limited social power and no political power at all, although a women’s maternal and domestic power was respected in the privacy of the home, “Our lives depend on how his lordship feels”. The limited power these women were given is different to modern society yet roles are still imposed on women to conform and be a dutiful wife.
One of the best summarizes of Greeks’ gods attitude toward human is the claim of Aphrodite in Euripides’ Hippolytus that she will treat well the people who revere her power, but will “trip up” those who are proud towards her, and this pri...
Both Euripides and Wole Soyinka are focused on a fundamental ethical imperative in their plays: welcome the stranger into your midst. Acceptance of Dionysus as a god, as "an essence that will not exclude or be excluded", is stressed (Soyinka 1). Pentheus is punished severely for excluding, for refusing to acknowledge or submit to, Dionysus' divine authority. In order to carve out a place for himself (in the pantheon, in the minds of the people), Dionysus' divinity manifests itself in an overtly political manner: its effect on those who worship him. This struggle for acceptance is first given voice in the confrontation between Pentheus and Teiresias in each play. While Euripedes is required to answer specific challenges made by Dionysus to Greek society, Soyinka attempts to trace Dionysian influences into the future, beyond the existence of an historically bound god or culture. Soyinka is more attentive to the transcendent qualities which separate Dionysus from all others. By examining this first conflict in each play, it may be possible to determine how (if at all) Soyinka expands the ethical dilemma first created by Euripedes.
March, Jennifer. "Euripides the Mysogynist?" Euripides, Women, and Sexuality. Ed. Anton Powell. New York: Routledge, 1990.