Women in Greek Drama

1. Women in Greek Drama

2. Klytaimestra • The wife of king Agamemnon. • In Aeschylus’ play Agamemnon (Oresteia) she takes a lover and kills her husband in the bath upon his return from Troy. • In Choephoroi she is killed by her son Orestes.

3. Electra • Daughter of Agamemnon and Klytaimestra. • She saves her brother Orestes as a baby, and waits for many years for revenge. • Lonely and paranoid, but resolutely determined

4. Antigone • Daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta. • She defies the order of Kreon not to bury her brother Polyneikes, motivated by religious duty. • As a result she is buried alive.

5. Medea • The alien princess, wife of Jason. • She is very jealous when ditched by Jason in favor of Kreousa, the princess of Corinth. • She kills Kreousa, her father, and her children in order to punish her husband. • Into magic and dark rituals. Wild and untamed.

6. Alcestis • Wife of kind Admettos, she willingly takes the place of her dying husband. • Thus she demonstrates strength and courage, instead of her husband’s weakness, and the roles are reversed. She is the man in the relationship.

7. Phaedra • In Euripides’ play Hippolytos she falls in love with her husband’s son, and when he refuses, she tells her husband that she was raped. • Hippolytos is killed by a curse. • Seneca Phaedra

8. Lysistrata • A strong woman who in quest for peace brings together all Athenian women. • They deprive men of sex, until the sexually frustrated men break down and conclude peace with Sparta

9. Ecclesiazousai • Praxagora convinces Athenian women to disguise as men, go to the Assembly and vote to surrender the city to the women. • Then she establishes an egalitarian, communist society, when all distinctions along lines of wealth and gender are eliminated.