Roles Of Women In The Odyssey Agamemnon and Antigone
Women play a very important role in history. ... Women play a strong role in The Odyssey, in Agamemnon, and in the story of Antigone, but their status and their image is portrayed somewhat differently in each of these stories. There are three basic types of women in The Odyssey: the goddess, the seductress, and the good hostess/wife. ... The next, and less benevolent role of women in The Odyssey is that of the seductress. Two stories about such women referred to in The Odyssey are those of the half-sisters Helen and Clytemnestra. ... The other sister also caused pain and suffering by having an affair and then killing her husband, Agamemnon, with her lover on his homecoming day. ... They are there to show that Agamemnons statement about his women, “So, / there’s nothing more deadly, bestial than a woman / set on works like these—what a monstrous thing / she plotted, slaughtered her own lawful husband! ... ” (Odyssey 263) The women in all three of these roles embody an essential part of the events of the story. ... The relationship between the hero and the women, in fact, forms the majority of the story. Thus the role of women in The Odyssey play an important part to making this epic poem such a wondrous tale and is essential to making this a wonderfully written epic. In Agamemnon, there are two main female character roles. ... In the play Agamemnon, Clytemnestra is first seen and her crime committed. She is depicted as a brutal, treacherous woman, "[with a] male strength of heart in its high confidence” (Agamemnon 5). ... For instance, Agamemnon sacrifices their daughter Iphigenia, to appease the goddess Diana, in order to win a war. ... After the conclusion of the war, Agamemnon brings a female prize to her (Clytemnestra’s) home. ... She was chosen by Agamemnon as a prize, and taken from the only home she had ever known, to a foreign land.