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The Prudent Dissident: Unheroic Resistance in Sophocles' Antigone

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2011

Jennet Kirkpatrick
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Abstract

Most contemporary political theorists who have interpreted Sophocles' Antigone have focused on the fearsome clash between Antigone and Creon. The relationship between Antigone and her weaker, more cautious sister Ismene has not garnered similar attention. This essay addresses this gap by revisiting the tantalizing possibility that Ismene played a more significant role in resisting Creon than has often been assumed. The essay shifts the analysis of Antigone, first, by illuminating the complex and fraught relationship between two women and emphasizing the political and legal challenges that they face together as women. Second, the essay shifts focus from vertical power relations—that is, between the individual and government—to horizontal power relations between disempowered outsiders. On this reading, Antigone reveals less about the downfall of a character than it does about the political power of the weak and disadvantaged.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 73 , Issue 3 , Summer 2011 , pp. 401 - 424
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2011

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References

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12 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, 25, 41.

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14 Unless otherwise noted, I use Elizabeth Wyckoff's translation of the Antigone in Sophocles I, in The Complete Greek Tragedies, ed. Grene, David and Lattimore, Richmond (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954)Google Scholar.

15 The role and significance of the minor characters is subject to debate. Rothaus notes, for instance, that “such an important action cannot be attributed to a minor character” like Ismene, while Benardete remarks, “Ismene stands next to Antigone as the most important figure in the play” (Rothaus, “The Single Burial of Polyneices,” 209; Benardete, Seth, Sacred Transgressions: A Reading of Sophocles' Antigone [South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's, 1999], 11)Google Scholar. Also see Frank, Jill, “The Antigone's Law,” Law, Culture and the Humanities 2 (2006): 336–340CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Saunders, A. N. W., “Plot and Character in Sophocles,” Greece & Rome 4, no. 10 (1934): 13–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Saxonhouse, Fear of Diversity.

16 Translation by Grene, David, in Sophocles I, ed. Grene, and Lattimore, , 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)Google Scholar. Wycoff translates lines 39–40 “If things have reached this stage, what can I do, poor sister, that will help to make or mend it?”

17 It is possible that Ismene does not see herself as deceitful even if she is. On the intriguing relationship between cunning, appearance, and self-deception, see Herzog, Don, Cunning (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 71–121Google Scholar.

18 More orthodox interpretations argue that responsibility for the first burial lies with Antigone or the gods. For the first argument, see Rose, “The Problem of the Second Burial”; Bradshaw, “The Watchman Scenes in the Antigone”; Held, “Antigone's Dual Motivation”; Rockwell, “Antigone: The 'Double Burial' Again”; Rothaus, “The Single Burial of Polyneices”; Whitehorne, “The Background to Polyneices' Disinterment and Reburial.” For the second argument, see Adams, S. M., “The Antigone of Sophocles,” Phoenix 9, no. 2 (1955): 47–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kitto, H. D. F., Sophocles, Dramatist and Philosopher (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 56–57Google Scholar; Segal, Charles, Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 159–61Google Scholar.

19 Honig, Macnaghten, and Rouse believe Antigone is unaware of Ismene's role in the first burial, a situation that adds dramatic tension to their second exchange (Honig, “Ismene's Forced Choice,” 22; Rouse, “The Two Burials in Antigone,” 41–42; Macnaghten, The Antigone of Sophocles, xiv). On this reading, it is difficult to make sense of the guard's description of Antigone in lines 423–28. Why would Antigone curse those who had stripped the body if she did not know that Ismene acted? If, however, Ismene informed Antigone of the burial, then line 556—“At least I was not silent. You were warned”—may refer to this exchange.

20 The pool of suspects is sizable. It is possible, for instance, that a non-Theban passerby buried the body without knowledge of Creon's decree. See Agathias, , The Histories, trans. Frendo, Joseph D. (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1975), 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Benardete, Sacred Transgressions, 33–34, 62. On this practice, also see Harrison, E. L., “Three Notes on Sophocles,” Classical Review 12, no. 1 (1962): 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 The requirements of Greek burial in the play are subject to much debate, as is the question whether the first two burials are actual or symbolic. See Harrison, “Three Notes on Sophocles”; Margon, “The Second Burial of Polyneices”; Whitehorne, “The Background to Polyneices' Disinterment and Reburial.”

22 In Euripides' Suppliants, Theseus describes burial rites as “a Panhellenic law” (526). While much is unknown about the eniausia, it is clear that Athenians understood this duty to the dead to be of great importance. Eniausiai were so significant that a childless Athenian man could adopt an heir for the sole purpose of ensuring that annual visits were conducted. And, in the case of a legal dispute over inheritance, failure to visit the tomb by an heir could be used to contest the kinship claim. The eniausia also played a role in the political process. Before appointment to a political office, an Athenian citizen had to prove that he had regularly fulfilled the requirements of eniausia. See Garland, Robert, The Greek Way of Death, 2nd ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 104–20Google Scholar; Humphreys, S. C., The Family, Women and Death: Comparative Studies, 2nd ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 85–88Google Scholar. The significance of tomb visits is also emphasized in Sophocles' Electra, in which much of the action unfolds around separate visits by Orestes and Chrysothemis to Agamemnon's tomb.

23 Of Antigone's confession (433–34), Adams notes that it “seems necessary to point out that this Greek does not and can not mean that she confessed to both burials” (Adams, “The Antigone of Sophocles,” 53). Segal points out that Antigone's “confession to ‘both acts,’ ambiguous in any case, makes as good sense as part of her defiant spirit as a statement of what really happened. Note the similar ambiguity in her defiant confession of 443 and her possessive reaction to the deed at Ismene's confession in 536–9” (Segal, Tragedy and Civilization, 443). Also see Butler, Antigone's Claim, 7–9; Honig, “Ismene's Forced Choice,” 12–13.

24 The chorus supplies the description of Ismene's entrance, and it seems odd that they would take her lament to be for a still-living Antigone.

25 Honig, “Ismene's Forced Choice”; Jebb, Sophocles, 3:xxix; Simpson, A. W. and Millar, C. M. H., “A Note on Sophocles' Antigone, Lines 531–81,” Greece & Rome 17, no. 50 (1948): 78–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adams, “The Antigone of Sophocles”; Sheppard, J. T., The Wisdom of Sophocles (London: Allen and Unwin, 1947)Google Scholar. Among scholars focused on the relationship between Ismene and Antigone, there is no agreement on whether they act as enemies, as friends, or as both. See Honig, “Ismene's Forced Choice”; Simpson and Millar, “A Note on Sophocles' Antigone, Lines 531–81”; Tyrell, W. Blake and Bennett, Larry J., “Sophocles' Enemy Sisters,” Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 15/16 (2009): 1–18Google Scholar.

26 These inconsistencies may help explain why literary reinterpretations of Antigone have been more generous to Ismene, both by narrating events from her perspective (as Yannis Ritsos does in her poem Ismene) and by depicting Ismene as a figure of resistance. In his 1944 version, Jean Anouilh portrays her as a late-blooming resister, while in Satoh Makoto's Ismene, Ismene defies and deceives Creon by switching her brothers' sheet-covered bodies. Jean Anouilh, Antigone, in Five Plays (London: Methuen, 1987)Google Scholar; Ritsos, Yannos, “Ismene,” in The Fourth Dimension: Selected Poems of Yannos Ritsos (Boston: Godine, 1977)Google Scholar; Satoh Makoto, Ismene, in Alternative Japanese Drama, ed. Rolf, Robert T. and Gillespie, John K. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

27 Harry calls the first burial “the work of the erstwhile shrinking Ismene” rather “than of the fearless Antigone” (Harry, “Studies in Sophocles,” 22). Honig notes that the first burial is “Ismene-like, subtle, sub-rosa, quiet, under cover of darkness, performed exactly … as Ismene herself counseled Antigone” (Honig, “Ismene's Forced Choice,” 15).

28 Harry, “Studies in Sophocles”; Honig, “Ismene's Forced Choice”; Macnaghten, Antigone of Sophocles; Rouse, “The Two Burials in Antigone.”

29 Charles Segal comments, “Why Antigone returns for this second burial is one of the most puzzling details of the plot” (Segal, Tragedy and Civilization, 159). Honig points out that burying Polyneices twice is excessive (Honig, “Antigone's Laments, Creon's Grief,” 37). Jebb's initial explanation—Antigone returns to pour the libations on the body—is controversial. Rouse asks “how the Antigone of the rest of the play could be so foolish” to forget the libations on her first visit and “so reckless to haunt the spot where her deed was done: so strong to plan, so weak to do” (Rouse, “The Two Burials in Antigone,” 41). Also see Margon, “The Second Burial of Polyneices,” 40, 48–49.

30 It may be that Antigone returns to the body because she knows that the guards have uncovered it, and thus she cries out like a “bitter bird” when she sees the body stripped of earth. While certainly credible in terms of her character, this interpretation does not explain how Antigone knew that the guards had swept away the dirt on the corpse. As Whitehorne notes, “the trap (if it is a trap) is never set by making any announcement that they have exhumed Polyneices, nor does the text give us any reason to suppose that Antigone's return to the body is motivated by anything she may have heard or suspected to this effect” (Whitehorne, “Background to Polyneices' Disinterment,” 139). If, instead, Antigone knows of Ismene's perfunctory efforts and goes to correct them, her cry may signify anguish over the exposure of her brother's body and distress at her sister's perfunctory burial.

31 Heidegger, Martin, Hölderlin's Hymn “The Ister,” trans. McNeill, William and Davis, Julia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 98Google Scholar.

32 Knox, Bernard M. W., The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), 69Google Scholar.

33 Margon, “The First Burial of Polyneices,” 293.

34 Ibid., 293–94.

35 Hugh Lloyd-Jones translates the final line of Ismene's speech “for there is no sense in actions that exceed our powers” (Lloyd-Jones, Hugh, ed., Sophocles: Antigone, the Women of Trachis, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994], 11)Google Scholar.

36 As Goldhill observes, these questions about gender difference extend to sibling relations as well (“Antigone and the Politics of Sisterhood,” 156).

37 Benardete notes that although the word for woman (gunē) occurs eighteen times over the course of the play, Antigone never uses the word. Antigone is “anti-generation, the true offspring of an incestuous marriage” (Benardete, Sacred Transgressions, 10, 61). According to Saxonhouse, “Antigone neuters herself; she is neither male nor female. Her name captures her stand: anti-gone, against birth, against generation” (Saxonhouse, Fear of Diversity, 69). Butler writes that when Antigone speaks to Creon, she “becomes manly; in being spoken to, he is unmanned, and so neither maintains their position within gender and the disturbance of kinship appears to destabilize gender throughout the play” (Butler, Antigone's Claim, 10).

38 Saxonhouse observes that Antigone becomes a “warrior whose glory can be achieved only at the moment of death” (Saxonhouse, Fear of Diversity, 70). Benardete notes that “Antigone borrows the language appropriate to the patriot soldier whose dying on behalf of his country coincides with his fighting” (Benardete, Sacred Transgressions, 11–12) .

39 Butler, Antigone's Claim; Euben, Corrupting Youth; Markell, Bound by Recognition, 73–74, 80–82.

40 Foucault, Michel, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977, ed. Gordon, Colin (New York: Pantheon, 1972), 256–57Google Scholar; Mahmood, Saba, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005)Google Scholar. Also see Kirkpatrick, Jennet, Uncivil Disobedience: Studies in Violence and Democratic Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Phillipe Nonet writes that Antigone's law “is never capable of being written: it is strictly speaking unsayable. Because it is unsayable, Sophocles must leave it unsaid. … Antigone's living law is Antigone” (Nonet, “Antigone's Law,” Law, Culture and the Humanities 2 [2006]: 324Google Scholar).

42 Zerilli, Linda M. G., Signifying Woman: Culture and Chaos in Rousseau, Burke, and Mill (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

43 On the contextual significance of the transition from Homeric funerary practices and those of fifth-century democratic Athens and women's role in administering traditional burial rites, see Honig, “Antigone's Laments, Creon's Grief”; Bennett, Larry J. and Tyrrell, W. Blake, “Sophocles' Antigone and Funeral Oratory,” American Journal of Philology 111, no. 4 (1990): 441–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Mark Griffith observes that “one of the most distinctive signs of ‘femininity’ on the tragic stage is a failure to speak at all (Sophocles' Iole, Aeschylus' Iphigenia or Helen, Euripides' veiled Alcestis), or an inability to keep on speaking—whether this silence is brought about by intimidation, by rhetorical convention, or by physical removal (Sophocles' Chrysothemis or Tecmessa, Euripides' Phaedra or Alcestis, Aeschylus' Cassandra, Io, or—ultimately—Clytemnestra)” (Griffith, “Antigone and Her Sister(s): Embodying Women in Greek Tragedy,” in Making Silence Speak: Women's Voices in Greek Literature and Society, ed. Lardinois, Andre and McClure, Laura [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001], 123–24)Google Scholar.

45 Honig, “Antigone's Laments, Creon's Grief.”

46 As Griffith notes, there is no authentic or unified voice of a woman that emerges from the play; the duties, expectations, and roles do not cohere tidily (Griffith, “Antigone and Her Sister(s)").

47 Saxonhouse, Arlene W., “Another Antigone: The Emergence of the Female Political Actor in Euripides' Phoenician Women,” Political Theory 33, no. 4 (2005): 474CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steiner, Antigones, 85, 209–11; Benardete, Sacred Transgressions, 1–2; Goldhill, “Antigone and the Politics of Sisterhood,” 145–46, 52–56.

48 Saxonhouse, Fear of Diversity, 9–15, 198–200. In Book II of the Politics, for instance, Aristotle asks what citizens should share together (koinon) in the city, and in particular if they should share children, women, and property as Plato's Republic seems to suggest. For Aristotle, inquiring into the koinon of the city means exploring what draws citizens together, what unites them in common purpose or, as Carnes Lord translates koinon, what joins them in partnership (Aristotle, , The Politics, trans. Lord, Carnes [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984], 55)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Perhaps to emphasize their familial connection even further, Antigone mentions Oedipus in the following line (2) and reminds Ismene that they share both a mother and a father.

50 Brann, Eva, “Welcome to Colonus,” Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2007, 55–56Google Scholar.

51 In explicating koinon autadelphon kara, Eva Brann observes that Antigone and Ismene “are even, as it were, their own children by being in two generations at once” (ibid., 56).

52 Benardete, Sacred Transgressions, 2.

53 Steiner, Antigones, 209. Also see Loraux, Nicole, “La main d'Antigone,” Métis 1, no. 2 (1986): 165–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In this respect, Antigone's opening line is reminiscent of her inability (or unwillingness) to draw a distinction between Polyneices, who attacked Thebes, and Eteocles, who died defending the city. To Antigone, her brothers are the same: “Death yearns for equal law for all the dead” (520).

54 Wood, Gordon S., The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 58Google Scholar.

55 Jill Frank asks, “Where might we look for the Antigone's law, grounded in the human practice of justice, that is a combination of human art and activity, respectful of what is, and appropriate to the world of plurality that is the polis? The answer, I think, lies in a figure in the poem who, despite her age, seems to know how to pay attention to human matters and ‘wait’: Ismene” (Frank, “The Antigone's Law,” 339). Also see Eliot, George, “The Antigone and Its Moral,” in Essays of George Eliot, ed. Pinney, Thomas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 265Google Scholar.

56 Goldhill ties this line to Ismene's erasure, observing, “Ismene is treated as if she were indeed no longer alive or no longer kin, no longer of the common blood. Ismene is written—spoken—out of the family line. This silencing is all too often repeated, rather than analyzed by the critics” (Goldhill, “Antigone and the Politics of Sisterhood,” 157).