Sophocles' "Antigone" & Racine's "Phèdre": post-class review

Benjamin-Constant - Antigone and Polynices - 1845~1902

I must admit that when I first read Antigone, I didn't love it. I found it boring, and I found Antigone and Creon relatively flat characters, especially after reading so many similar plays over the last few weeks.

Lorraine led the class in an in depth conversation  about Antigone.  As always, class discussion gave me an entirely new perspective - specifically, last night's class made me rethink my opinion of Antigone's Creon and Antigone.

Stephen posed the question of whether the play was about politics or family.  I thought only of the rules of divine law, seeing Antigone as virtuous and Creon as a villain (in the terms of the Greek religious moral code).  There was a suggestion that Antigone, instead of being a paragon of tragic virtue, was just a headstrong teenager with hints of an inappropriate love for her brother.  Bruce felt strongly that Creon had the right, as a king, to leave Polyneices unburied. It was pointed out that Creon was fairly rational until Antigone's disobedience drove him into a passionate, irrational fury where his arrogance and hubris insulted the gods.  

Both Antigone and Creon strive to forward their own agendas thinking that the gods are on their side.  Neither Antigone nor Creon were rewarded for their acts however; in fact they are both harshly punished. Antigone takes her own life and is presumably reunited with her cursed family in the underworld.  Creon lives on, but alone.  In a way, the loss of their family makes them both exiles. This punishment, which is terrible, but not completely devastating for either of them indicates that neither characters are purely good or bad.

As for Phèdre, we discussed the text as it has been positioned in the Age of Enlightenment.  We discussed the fact that Thesius was a duke, not a king, and so his decisions did not have the weight of the decisions that characters in the other plays had.  We discussed the trope of the love triangle (or unfinished square in this case) and Joni pointed out that although the square was not fully joined in love, it was in hate, an astute perspective that I had not considered. We saw Hippolytus as an icon of chivalric love, like a mythic (non-Mallory) version of Lancelot. Still, Bruce pointed out that if he was truly a masculine hero, he would have stood up for his love, and told his father that he wanted Arica, then claimed her, in the same way that Arica expressed the desire to conquer him.  Finally, we discussed the obsession, madness and familial links,  between Medea and Phèdre, and how love is so often given as a curse instead of a blessing.