In The Bacchae, Dionysus returns to his homeland of Thebes to exact punishment on his aunts who claimed that his mother didn’t, in fact, sleep with Zeus, and instead she slept with a mortal man. But Dionysus also punishes the other women in Thebes by sending them all into the mountains, leaving behind their gender roles in the city. He even disregards his own gender roles, especially when interacting with Pentheus. Dionysus clearly knows how to use perceived gender roles to manipulate and affect others. In the first section, I will talk about the liberation of the women from their assigned gender roles under a patriarchal society. In the city, women are expected to obey their husbands and fathers, but in the mountains they are able to