Female Rebellion and It's Impliactions in The Bacchae

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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.
The Bacchant are considered offensive to the Theban elites, due to their destruction of livestock and men. However, they also pose a threat to the structure of Theban politics. Pentheus feels threated both politically and personally due to the, “insolent hybris of the Bacchae, a huge humiliation to Greeks” (779). The humiliation is not only towards Greeks a whole, and due to Pentheus's power he is looked poorly on due to these women. The fact that women overruled men, the serving class uprooting from the served, ensues a chaos which creates a loss of faith to Pentheus's constitutents. Since political destruction is not an outcome Pentheus wants, he must supress the female rebellion. Female independence becomes dangerous and in order to lessen these anxietie...

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...She brings his blood back into the city, thereby polluting all who come into contact with her. Her danger to the public represents the vile contaminated woman and Agave and her sisters must be exiled in order to keep order within Thebes. Their exile keeps them passive, with the male dominated elite finally back in control.
The impact of female rebellion on society is illustrated as so intense that it must be stopped before it becomes overtly uncontrollable and violent. However, there is a mysticism to the fringe society of Bacchant which both tantatlizes and concerns its viewers. The Bacchae uses this ambiguity with not only female rebellion but also other attributes such as the relationship between Dionysus and Pentheus, violence, crossdressing, and others. The dual nature of The Bacchae leads it to be highly readable and rebels against conventional thinking.

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