Domination In Antigone

The resistance of the female characters occurs within a wider network of subgroup politics. However, while The Burial at Thebes maintains a highly gendered hierarchy through the Guard’s domination of Antigone, Hedda Gabler highlights the tyrannical dynamics present within the subgroup of women. Scott writes of both the “countervailing power” of dynamics among subordinates as a determinant of subordinate behaviour and of “domination within domination” impacting the hidden and public transcripts. Subordinate groups, depending on their cohesiveness and the perceived severity of their threat, engender “coercive pressure” to prevent defection and perpetuate specific behaviour within the group. The character of the Guard connects Antigone and Ismene to a wider group, all subject to Creon’s domination. In addition, the Guard illustrates

The Guard “drew the short straw” of reporting the deviance to Creon, coerced primarily by his peers, not the dominant, into maintaining order. Another hierarchy becomes visible in the Guard’s treatment of Antigone, calling her “my prisoner” and subjugating her to Creon. By contrast, the subgroup hierarchy between Hedda and Thea is complicated by age and class, and as Scott warns, “no less tyrannical” than the system of patriarchal domination impacting both women. Though Hedda asserts group cohesion by rhetorically grouping the women as in “school together” and old friends, Thea reminds her, “You were two years above me… in a different world from me, socially.” In the past, Hedda also threatened to “set fire” to Thea’s hair, and she reiterates this threat in the present: “I think I will set fire to your hair after all.” Hedda also verbally abuses Thea with insults and commands, such as “Oh shut up, you idiot!” The Burial at Thebes once again broadens its perspective, showing another masculine dominant in the Guard and the larger group of Creon’s subjects, while Hedda Gabler deepens and complicates the subgroup dynamics of Hedda