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Antigone & Nora

The play Antigone by Sophocles and A DollÆs House by Henrik Ibsen show many elements in common with respect to their heroines. In Antigone, Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus, disobeys King CreonÆs orders of established law and buries her brother. In A DollÆs House, Nora rebels against her husband and confining role as housewife and mother and walks out on her family. Both women risk enormous odds by transgressing against civil and conventional law and both pay an enormous price. Antigone will be put to death for her actions, while Nora abandons her husband and children, walking out into the night all alone. Despite the choices made by both women, they are both tragic heroines because the circumstances in which they find themselves leave them little choice but to stick to their principles and risk everything.

Both Antigone and Nora break civil and conventional law. For Antigone, the law she breaks is burying her brother against the orders of King Creon. Creon believes this is a violation of established law. Antigone disregards the knowledge that she has of this and buried her brother, despite warnings from her sister Ismene. Their father Oedipus suffered greatly due to breaking the law, and Ismene tries to warn her sister of the consequences for breaking the law. However, Antigone is not worried about the potential consequences of doing so, because she believes that she ôshall suffer nothing as great as dying with a lack of grace,ö (Sophocles 96-97). If she wishes to retain any honor or a sense of justice, she feels it is her only choice to ignore CreonÆs dictates. Her sense of justice and what she feels she owes to her dead brother give her the courage to be strong in the face of CreonÆs anger.

Like Antigone, Nora feels that she has little honor or dignity living under the control of first her father and then her husband Torvald. Nora has never been able to express her own emotions nor fulfill her potentialit...

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Antigone & Nora. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 06:25, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1710362.html