Research Paper on:
Strong Women in the Works of Henrik Ibsen and Sophocles

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
individuals in their own right. While this scenario basically did not change until the latter half of the twentieth century, literature demonstrates that women have not always passively accepted  their societal role. Sophocles play Antigone showed that even in ancient Greece, women were not always the perfectly accepting, socially passive creatures that society expected them to be. Similarly, during  the Victorian era of the nineteenth century, Henrik Ibsen likewise pictured a woman who possessed the courage to take control of her own life. Throughout the centuries Antigone continues  to be one of the strongest women pictured in Western literature. While male citizens enjoyed the freedom of Athenian democracy, women in ancient Athens had few rights and were  expected to remain completely within the domestic sphere. Furthermore, girls did not receive the same education as their male counterparts. Everything about the life of a woman was restrictive.  Yet, from this social position of being "only a woman," Antigone found the strength to stand up for what she believed to be the moral correct path and placed familial  and religious obligation ahead of duty to the state. Rather then simply acquiesce to Creons dictates concerning the burial of her brother, Antigone risks everything and pays the ultimate price  for bearing her brother in accordance with the dictates of tradition and Greek religious practice. Citing feminist historians, Katz (2000) points out  that almost everything that the modern world knows about Greek women is derived from sources written by men. The view of Plato and Aristotle appear regularly in discussions on women  in ancient Greece (Katz, 2000). Platos works are picked apart looking for signs of ancient feminism and Aristotle is typically condemned outright as a misogynist (Katz, 2000). But while Antigone