March 11: Women's Month

Antigone’s courage and perseverance stood out in a time when women didn’t count. She saw it as her duty to bury her fallen brother, even when the king had forbidden it. Her sister Ismene is afraid: “Remember that we are women, not made to fight with men.” But Antigone stands firm: “I shall bury him. I have to please the dead for longer than I need to please the living. Nor could I think that a decree of man could override the laws of Heaven. Was I to stand before the god’s tribunal because I feared a man?” The king is outraged: “There is no room for pride in one who is a slave! Now she would be the man, not I, if she defeated me and did not pay for it! While I am living, no woman shall have rule. Better far be overthrown – if must be, by a man than to be called the victim of a woman.” Facing the hardest penalty, Antigone’s defiant last words resound till today: “Now I must go to join my own, those many whom Persephone has welcomed home… Yet what I did, the wise will all approve. How savagely impious men use me, for keeping a law that is holy.”

Antigone condemned to Death by Creon, Giuseppe Diotti,

Academia Carrara, Bergamo, Italy

Antigone Giving Burial to Polynices, Jean-Louis Bézard,

Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France