Sophocles' The Women of Tarchis

Sophocles' The Women of Tarchis

Sophocles’s The Women of Tarchis tells the story of the desires that killed Heracles and Deianira, his wife. Heracles desires another woman, Iole, and, off stage, destroys her father’s kingdom so that he can have her and then sends Iole to his home. In response to this, Deianira, desiring Heracles to love her, and not keep another woman in their house, uses a deadly poison, which she believed was a love potion, hoping to make him love only her. Because of this, he dies, and she kills herself out of remorse. Both of them desire, both of them act on their desires, and both of them die because of desire. However, the way these desires are discussed and understood by the characters and, presumably, the audience are very different. Heracles desire is very direct. He desires people and acts on that desire. In other words, he sees what he wants and he goes and gets it, destroying anything that stands in his way. Deianira, on the other hand, is not the active agent. She desires to be desired by Heracles. Even the grammar used to talk about her situation is passive. When she does act on her desires, it is not straightforward, but through trickery and love potions. Later, when the potion’s true form is revealed, her actions are attributed to Nessus, the centaur that tricked her into believing the poison was a love potion. These descriptions reveal assumptions about desire, and what form it takes for men and for women. Heracles and Deianira, in Sophocles’s The Women of Tarchis, exemplify desire’s gender difference.

An important aspect of desire in ancient Grease is that a deity represents this set of feelings. Eros, the young son of Aphrodite, it the imp the rules everyone’s hearts. Deianira describes his control over mortals when she publicly responds to the news that Heracles has fallen in love and literally taken a new wife: "How foolish one would be to climb into the ring with [desire] and try to trade blows with him, like a boxer. For he rules even the Gods as he pleases, and he rules me…You see that I would be altogether mad to blame my husband, because he suffers from this sickness" (441-446). She explains that it is foolish to fight with desire, but that desire will rule everyone at some point, including herself and Heracles.