Depiction of Women Women are depicted as subordinate creatures in both the Tanakh and Antigone, yet throughout history, they continue to fight this hierarchy in one way or another. Within this paper, there will be examples of the ways women are treated and how they react to this treatment. It will also discuss various situations that strengthen this argument. In the Tanakh, when God created man, God took a look at man and decided that he needed someone to help him. God did not create woman to be his equal, but God created her to be his helper. In Genesis 2, the Tanakh somewhat puts women in the same category with the animals, but one step higher due to the fact that she was made from man. When Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, they had free reign to go where they wanted, eat what they chose, do what they wished… anything except eat from the tree of knowledge. It was Eve who initially bent the rules and ate from the tree of life. She showed reckless abandon for the rules that were set by the ruling power (just happens to be God in this case) and chose to do what she wanted because she “felt” like doing it. The general feeling in both the Tanakh and Antigone is that women act more on their feelings and do whatever they do and face the consequences later. They realize that they have the same set of rules that men have, yet they can’t control their emotions enough not to break them. They are not above the law, but merely that they act more on emotion than men do. When Antigone lost her brother, she knew that there was a law that he was not to be buried. Yet she felt that he needed to be buried and that she was going to do it. Antigone could have gone to Creon and requested special permission due to the family ties, but she chose not to, figuring that it would most likely do no good. Instead, she took it upon herself to go above the law and bury him anyway. When confronted about it, she did not deny it. Antigone essentially laughed in the face of the leaders saying that she regretted nothing. After Antigone had been caught and refused to deny guilt, Creon was furious and started ranting and raving in disbelief that she would blatantly break the law without a second thought. It seemed that he didn’t want to believe it at first, but ultimately could not help her when she openly admitted guilt. Creon was furious that Antigone would do such a thing. Creon initially assumed that it was a man who did this bad deed, and he sent his Sentry to find out who did it. Once it was found who had stepped outside the law, and that it was not just Antigone, but a woman, Creon was shocked. His view of women was shared among everyone in the Greek culture at the time in that women were subordinate. Creon confirms the place of women in the hierarchy in the statement, “Better to fall from power, if fall we must, at the hands of a man – never be rated inferior to a woman, never.” (Sophocles, 94) When we look at women in the Tanakh, it discusses the fact that God made man, but then decided that man all by himself wasn’t enough. “But for Adam, no fitting helper was found.” (Truelove, Genesis 2:20) So God’s initial goal was to make man to live on the earth and the only reason he made woman was as an afterthought to help Adam (man). The creation of woman is mentioned at least three times; once in chapter 1, verse 27, once in chapter 2, verse 22, and again in chapter 5, verse 2. It makes one wonder the way that Genesis is worded if God didn’t create woman multiple times. These could just be referring to the same incident, just at different points in the writing. However, it could also mean that God made woman multiple times in order to find man a suitable helper. Women continually fail to be feared or considered physically/mentally equal throughout the Tanakh. In Exodus, chapters 1 and 2, the Egyptians even considered the women to be inconsequential as they had ordered the midwives to kill any male Hebrew babies that were born because they feared them growing up and gaining power. The Egyptians weren’t scared of the female offspring growing up and amounting to anything that would challenge their power. Being controlled by their emotions, the midwives were not always killing the male Hebrew babies as ordered. This failure by the midwives is another instance of the women not carrying out a clear cut order in the first couple books of the Tanakh. The first of course being when Eve was duped into taking the apple in the Garden of Eden by the serpent. Even then, when this happened, God did not go initially to Eve and question her about it, God went to Adam and questioned him about what happened because he was the man, or in other words, the one in charge. Only after questioning Adam did he ask Eve what happened once Adam explained to God that it was “the woman that you put at my side.” (Truelove, Genesis 3:12) When God handed down the Ten Commandments, he even pointed out the insignificance of the woman as a person of power. This original set of laws for his people appears not even to address women. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house: you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female slave, or his ox or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” (Truelove, Exodus 20:14) God points out that you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, therefore the law is being given to man. God does acknowledge both man and woman in the next sentence when referencing male and female slaves. This proves that he was talking directly to man in the first part of the sentence and not that he was just generalizing putting man and woman together in the first part. God purposefully singled out man as being the one that he demands to follow his laws. Combine this with the aforementioned section where Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, and God questioned man about what happened. This just strengthens the argument that the laws of the land both in the beginning in Genesis and later on in Exodus with the Ten Commandments were created to be followed by man and that if his helper or woman defies the law, then the man has to answer for it. In other words, if man doesn’t keep his woman under control, then he will have to answer for it. This view of women being subordinate is pretty clear in Antigone as it states, “From now on they’ll act like women. Tie them up, no more running loose; even the bravest will cut and run, once they see Death coming for their lives.” (Sophocles, 90) This is after they have concluded that Antigone broke the law. This is one difference between the Tanakh and Antigone, or the Hebrews and Greeks. With the Hebrew culture, if the women broke the law, whichever man was responsible for her would be in trouble as well as the woman. In the Greek culture, it appears that women can and will act of their own accord and then face the consequences on their own. In Antigone’s case, it was even her future father in law that was convicting her and doing the sentencing. If this were the Hebrew culture, I’m sure there would have been some form of punishment for her fiancé which would have been Creon’s own son. It would be interesting to see how Creon would have handled this situation had this been the case. In Greek culture, men who want to be rulers of the state must prove first that they can be a good ruler of their households. When this is discussed in Antigone, it is followed up with talks about how if a man does a poor job of ruling his house, then “she” begins to become the definition of anarchy. “She, she destroys cities, rips up houses, breaks the ranks of spearmen into headlong rout.” Then later on the same page, “Therefore we must defend the men who live by law, never let some woman triumph over us.”(Sophocles, 94) In both Hebrew and Greek cultures women are looked upon as subordinate. The difference in the two is that in the Hebrew culture, women are looked at more as belonging to the men and the men are more responsible for all of the women’s actions if they break the law of the land. However, in both cultures, women are not intended to keep positions of power. They are meant to be helpers or supporters of their husbands. As has been proven through time, women still go out on their own because they can be driven more by their emotions than men.

Works Cited
Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays. New York: Penguin Books, 1984. Print
Truelove, Sarah, et al. Patterns in Western Civilization. Boston: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2007. Print