3
Oedipus and Antigone
Revisited: The Family Drama
Moreover, the "dark continent'' trick has been pulled on her: she has been made to see ( = not see) woman on the basis of what man wants to see of her, which is to say, almost nothing. -Hélene Cixous The Newly Born Woman
What is sexuality? Toward whom is it permissible for it to be felt and expressed? Does it enhance or detract from one's sense of self? Is it safe or endangering? Is it associated with feelings of pain, pleasure, or numbness? Does one seek or demand satisfaction or hide sexual feelings and acts? Are they shameful? Do they enhance one's potency? One's desirability? One's vulnerability?
The learned expressíons of sexuality gíve us another opportunity to consider gender embodied. Everyone ís born wíth a genetícally determined sexual potential. The means and direction of that expression, at least in our society, ínvolve a narrowing of focus, a learning of what ís possíble, what ís considered appropríate or inappropriate. While sexuality changes and develops throughout the lífe cycle, it does so only within a context of learned meanings.
From the masculine perspectíve, women are defined by their bodies. Everything about a woman is both grounded in and defined by her female body and, in particular, its sexuality, defined in masculinist society as the ability to arouse, rather than to experience, desire. The measure of woman's sexuality is man's tumescence. What about her is arousing, and even whether she intends to arouse, is also designated by the male. It may be her legs for a "leg man," her breasts for a "breast man," her resistance or her nonresistance for a rapist. His feelings become hers, his desire her desirability, his admiration her measure of worth, his disdain her degradation, his ridicule her humiliation.
Most traditional psychological approaches distinguish between normal and pathological fragmentation, or fetishistic male desire. For example, it is considered perfectly normal for a man to be aroused by high-heeled shoes on a woman's feet. It is probably normal for him to be aroused by high heels just seen or about to be seen on someone's feet, or even fantasized on someone's feet. It is probably not normal for him to be aroused by the shoes alone or the feet alone-but the most current official diagnostic system permits even that, as long as the relationship is not repeatedly or exclusively preferred (American Psychiatric Association I987). Only at this arbitrary point does modern psychological thought consider it fetishistic.
Women's sexuality is shaped by the indeterminate male observer, as well as by his more determínate representatives in her life, including her father and other significant male adults, as well as brothers and males from her peer group. It is also shaped by women: mothers or other female primary and secondary nurturers, and even daughters, both by example and by direct statement. It is influenced mightily by the messages of the culture communicated through movies and television and, in particular, through rock music and its purveyors. It is not absurd to ask whether children might learn more about sexuality from MTV than from their parents. These various influences typically do not contradict one another, but collude to instruct young girls that their sexuality is based on appearance and performance, on desirability rather than desire, on restraint rather than exploration. Sexuality is perhaps the most obviously gendered realm of functioning in this society.
Masculinist psychological theory, when it has explicitly dealt with sexuality as a core construct, has typically considered that of women by extrapolation from, oras a variation on, male sexuality. Freudian theory has given us the male and female oedipal complexes, identical up to the point of resolution: the oedipal complex can be fully resolved in the male, as a bearer of the penis, but can never be resolved in the female, who lacks the instrument of maturity. Once again, women are, in comparison with men, only partially formed human beings according to this theory; full adult maturity requires, by definition, a penis.
Object-relations theorists, both feminist and nonfeminist, have reconsidered the Freudian approach and, in keeping with the Kleinian tradition, have focused on the pre–oedipal stage as more determinative than the oedipal, particularly in female development (Chodorow I978). Yet this approach still takes as its basis the oedipal, or male, model. Other approaches have simply considered this model irrelevant or less than useful in its overemphasis on sexuality-and male sexuality, at that-as the central organizing principie in human development. Certainly it is reductionist at best, simplistic and damaging to women at worst. It would thus seem that a feminist perspective must discard the myth of Oedipus as central to both male and female psychology.
Yet perhaps there is something to be learned from the myth of Oedipus that is neither reductionist nor misogynist. Perhaps it can be instructive in the development of a complex model of women's psychology. It has certainly captured the popular imagination through severa hundred years and across different cultures as a family drama unmasked. And so it is, but what if we were to read it more fully than did Freud, and not only from the perspective of the son?
BEYOND FREUD'S VIEW OF THE OEDIPAL CONFLICT
The myth of Oedipus as representative of the sexual development of the universal male child and his incestuous desires toward the universal mother is a cornerstone of Freudian theory. Upon it rests the dynamic formulation of repression and the unconscious. The plight of the unfortunate Oedipus has been rendered so much a part of popular culture that it would seem we hardly need reminding of the sequence of events leading to the tragic fate of Oedipus the king. However, that very popularization from the perspective of the son only is what críes out for a retelling. Sophodes' trilogy of plays is, in fact, replete with complex familydilemmas. Second to Oedipus in importance is his daughter/sister, Antigone, for whom the third part of the trilogy is named. As Oedipus represents the dilemma of the son, so does Antigone personify that of the dutiful daughter in patriarchal society?
Freud turned consistently to the mythology of the most patriarchal and sexist of civilizations, the Greek and the Roman, for psychological understanding. This may not be problematic insofar as one applies them in turn to patriarchal cultures such as our own. Such an analysis, however, is not universal in any sense, but may be useful in understanding family dynamics and relationships within patriarchy. As such, the oedipal myth is far richer and more complex than is indicated by Freud's and subsequent readings of it. Certainly there are important characters other than Oedipus, and their dilemmas as members of the family and society must be considered. Even that of Oedipus should not be reduced only to the role of son and husband, as he is seen primarily as a father in two-thirds of the trilogy. While the most famous play in the trilogy, Oedipus Rex, was written by Sophocles in about 425 B.C., Antigone was actually written first, somewhere around 442 B.c. Oedipus at Colonus was written last, in 406 n.c., shortly before Sophocles' death at the age of ninety. As Rudnytsky I987) has noted, regardless of how one views the trilogy, Antigone must be considered the pivotal play, since it may be viewed as either a beginning or an ending. More to the feminist point, for the reader interested in the fate of the daughter and not just that of the son, Antigone must be considered as seriously as is Oedipus Rex.
In the familiar story, Oedipus ascends the throne as a result of solving the riddle of the Sphinx. Having murdered his father, King Laius, he can assume the paternal throne, whose spoils include the queen-his mother, Jocasta. For a period, the two incestuous partners rule Thebes happily and ignorantly as husband and wife. Two girls and two boys are born of their union: Antigone, Ismene, Polynices, and Eteocles. Only when Thebes falls upon hard times does Oedipus, in seeking the cause, discover the truth about his origins from the blind prophet Tiresias. True to his destiny, he had not avoided slaying bis father and marrying his mother.
Upon learning his true identity, Oedipus puts out his eyes with Jocasta's brooch, and she commits suicide by hanging herself. Her purpose in the family apparently ends with her role as wife to two kings and mother to one. There is virtually no evidence of a bond between her and the four children she bore with Oedípus. They appear to be their father's children.
Although Freud’s reading and the popular rendition end here, with Jocasta's death and Oedipus' self-intlicted blindness, a mere third of the play has unfolded at this point. The remainder involves the fate of Oedipus as well as his four children, particularly Antigone. As their lives continue, they will play out the destiny of their father/brother, Oedipus. While Jocasta is irrelevant to the next generation, so that her suicide does not impede but facilitares the course of events, Oedipus' life must and does continue.
In Oedipus at Colonus, the blind Oedipus wanders the land, accompanied by and completely dependent upon Antigone, who serves as his protector and his eyes. Betrothed to the son of Creon-brother of Jocasta and successor to Oedipus-she is unable to marry him because she must instead spend her days caring for her father. As Oedipus had his destiny, sois this hers, each determined by the acts of their fathers, as they are children of their fathers and not their mothers. Ismene, although less central than Antigone, also devores herself to her father's welfare, while Oedipus' two sons·have turned against him and each other and are contending for his lost throne. At the end of this section, Oedipus, guided by Antigone, returns to die a peaceful and honorable death. Before dying, Oedipus entrusts the . Welfare of his unprotected daughters to Theseus. He then orders tbe two away, since, as females and daughters, they are not entitled to "see what you sbould not see" (Rocbe I958, p. I55). Only Tbeseus, as a man and a king, can be with Oedipus in his last moments on eartb and can know the secret site (and sight) of bis death.
In tbe third pan, Antigone comes to tbe fore as a central character whose fare does or should concern us as much as does that of Oedipus. It is she who remains a faithful guide to her father and loyal to her brothers, thereby placing herself in peril. Her two brotbers continue to battle, ultimately to tbe death, tbus leaving Creon the undisputed master of Thebes. He orders that Polynices, who died figbting against bis own city, be left unburied and disbonored on the battlefield. When Antigone decides to defy Creon's order and bury her dead brother, she is summarily condemned to death by Creon. Haemon, Creon's son, responds to tbis edict by pleading with his fatber for merey toward his betrotbed, which his fatber denies. Antigone is soon found hanging, a similar death her only tie (a noose) to her mother. Dead by ber side and by bis own hand is Haemon.
Reading the Oedipus myth only from tbe masculine perspective renders the female cbaracters minor, íf not invisible. If it is read through a Freudian lens as a parable of sexual development, then one error of whicb we are quite aware is the resultant holding of female sexuality to a male standard, since the latter becomes the only standard. Sophodes' drama, as well as Freud's reading of ir, is from the perspectíve of the son. In fact, according to mythological tradition prior to Sophocles, it was the sin of Laius, father of Oedipus, in abducting and raping the son of King Pelops that brought the curse upon bis house. The sins of the father were visited upon the son and (tangentially, in the eyes of tbe ancient Greeks and of Freud) upon the wife/mother. Sophocles, however, "anticipated Freud's rejection of the seduction tbeory in favor of the Oedipus complex" (Rudnytsky I987, p. 255). The deeds of the father are replaced by tbe desires of the daughter (or son). As tbe hypothesís of seduction as a mere fantasy of the child has been repudiated by recent feminist clinical and empírica!work, which has conclusively established and documented the prevalence of molestation by fathers and other adult male relatives, so does this reading of the oedipal and Antigone myths demand another look. The deeds of the father and husband must be considered along with the perspective of the wife/mother and tbe daughter herself in order more fully to glean the dynamics of the family in patriarchal society.
lt now seems apparent to us that Freud, in repudiating the seduction hypothesis, was psychologically impelled to reject the notion that bis respected colleagues and friends could be sexually molesting theír daughters, or that he himself had a psychologically incestuous relationship with his own daughter, helpmeet, and analysand, Anna. There is also evidence, via a reported dream, of unrecognized feelings toward another of his daughters, Mathilde (Lerman I986). Additionally, Balmary (I979) has suggested that Freud's failure to recognize in the Oedipus myth the culpability of the father was tied to his failure to recognize bis own father's reputation as a Don Juan. By means of a psychological transfer that Freud himself would have labeled projection, the transgression of the father becomes the wish of the child. He never again dealt with sexuality of the adult male directed toward children (Lerman I986). Instead, it became children who sexually desired adults. Laius' sin becomes that of his son, and Oedipus' that of his children. As Freud's version imposes childhood sexuality upon adults, so does it attribute the depth and complexity of adult sexuality to children. lt assigns to women and children the embodiment of and responsibility for adult male sexuality. Instead let's look at adult sexuality as located not in chíldren but where it belongs, in adults.
As Oedipus' dilemma became a symbol for the dilemma of the son, so might that of Antigone be considered representative of the inevitable fate of the good daughter in the patriarchal family. While Freud (I975, pp. 382, 424) was aware that he had his own Antigone in the person of Anna, he failed to consider her dilemma from her perspective, and dynamically oriented psychology has, to this day, followed suit. Oedipus was a son anda husband, as was Freud, but both were also fathers. The fathers of psychology have all but ignored the psychology of fathers. In Antigone, Oedipus' fate is represented by his children, externalized representations of himself. The sons battle for his lost power, while the issue for his daughters is one of loyalty to him and to their brothers. He remains the focal point. So if Sophodes ignores the inherited curse of Laius, he does not omit the inherited curse of Oedipus, as the son is also the father. There is a great deal more to be understood about masculine psychology through reconsidering the myth of Oedipus, the father, and about the feminine through under- standing bis daughter Antigone.
Anna Freud (see Masson I984) took the position that if oedipal theory were removed from psychoanalytic theory, the importance of both conscious and unconscious fantasy would disappear with it. Freud's "discovery" of the Oedipus complex was applied to male children and later extended to females with a sleight of hand so clumsy that it captivated almost no one, least of all Freud himself. Even he eventually repudiated this construct, saying, "We have an impression here that what we have said about the Oedipus complex applies with complete strictness to the male child only, and that we are right in rejecting the term 'Electra complex' whích seeks to emphasize the analogy between the attitude of the two sexes" (in Strachey I953-74, pp. 228-29).
The Electra terminology was not adopted, but a symmetrical model of female and male psychosexual development is still with us. The oedipal conflict and Freud's reading of the Oedipus myth have influenced the views of generations of psychotherapists concerning childhood sexuality, induding many feminist theorists, who accept the basic model while focusing on the pre-oedipal years as crucial for the development of females. According to Freud himself, "The phase of exclusive attachment to the mother, which may be called the pre-Oedipus phase, possesses a far greater importance in women than it can have in men" (in Strachey I953-74, p. 230). Nancy Chodorow and many contemporary feminist object-relations theorists have returned ro an emphasis on this stage of development for the female:
There is analytic agreement that tbe preoedipal period is of different lengtb in girls and boys. Tbere is also an agreed on, if undeveloped, formulation concerning those gender differences in tbe nature and quality of the preoedipal motber-child relationsbip. . . . As a hoy moves into oedipal attachment ... , bis fatber does become an object of bis ambivalence. At tbis time, tbe girl's intense ambivalent attacbment remains with ber mother. [Cbodorow I978, p. 97]
Yet even sucb a focus accepts the different stages of the basic oedipal model as appropriate for both genders, and it is this very model that merits reexamination. While sorne of the best-known male thinkers througbout history, from Hegel to Nietzsche, have concerned themselves with tbe plight of Oedipus, the son, it remains for us to consider the myth through female eyes.
OEDIPAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SON/FATHER: A FEMINIST INTERPRETATION
Por a boy or man in patriarchal culture, women are often not experienced as individual’s separare from himself. First his mother, then his wife, and finally his daughters are experienced as extensions of bimself and his own needs. While he must experience the frustration of inevitably partial gratification of bis needs by bis mother or her substitute, he is instructed by her, by bis father, and by society that he continues to have the right to expect caretaking and gratification from females. The male child fails to resolve this infantile grandiosity, but only transfers it from bis mother to other women. He is the king of bis domain, as was Oedipus, saved by bis mother, although her own life and that of his father were thereby put in peril. Oedipus eventually loses her, along with bis throne and bis eyesight; however, he does not even pause to mourn her loss, so concerned is he with bis own fate as a man and a king. Oedipus simply transfers his sense of entitlement to Antigone, who takes over from Jocasta as an extension of him and bis fate. His fate becomes hers. Her mission is to serve him, to provide both sight and sustenance, yet still she is viewed as weaker than he. "For who would borrow eyes to walk or lean his weight on weakness?" (Roche I958, p. 92).
The oedipal complex in men rardy reaches resolution in a patriarchal society, as adult men typically continue to experience themselves in this grandiose manner, which includes a sense of entitlement to women. Thus, it is a complex neither of childhood nor of sexua·lity narrowly defined, but one that applies more generally to masculine psychology in a patriarchal system. lt is characterized by extensive boundaries that subsume others, particularly females, who are considered to contain the feelings, conflicts, and meanings that men attribute to them. For Freud, this meant that the transgressions of the fathers were really the desires of the daughters. For fathers, this means that their daughters exist to meet their (the fathers') needs. It is the right of the fathers to train their daughters to please them in all ways, including sexuallythe latter al! too frequently through incest and through the father's perceived right to view and comment upon bis daughter in a sexualized manner. This right is extended to all men in a patriarchal society, who have the right to view and evaluare, to sexualize any woman who falls within the range of their sight.
Gregory Zilboorg (I944) noted, as did Freud, that father-daughter incest was the last incest taboo to be introduced. According to Zilboorg, matrilineal inheritance made a mother and children one class and the father and children another. Since this taboo had to do with the preservation of property, it evolved as necessary. This analysis misses the obvious: if the inheritance or property of the father indudes the daughter, then this is not as likely to be considered a necessary taboo and will be the most frequently violated. In a pamphlet published by Barbara Bodichon in I854, she noted: "The legal custody of children belongs to the father. During the lifetime of a sane father, the mother has no rights over her children, except a limited power over infants, and the father may take them from her and dispose of them as he thinks fit" (in Heilbrun I988, p. 85). Psychologically, if not legally, the contemporary father may not consider his sexual right to his daughter to be a violation at all. lt is by virtue of their gaze that men sin against women, that they objectify them, make them prisoners of appearance, of age and color, of physical beauty, of their shape and size. Only through blindness can such sight cease to oppress. Oedipus rips off Jocasta's brooches and destroys his eyes, not his genitals, in an act of self-mutilation. No one is castrated or even threatened with castration. Blindness and not castration is the appropriate punishment for Oedipus' sin. The prophet Tiresias, who revealed his fate to Oedipus, was also blind. Perhaps to be a wise man he must be blind, justas, in order not to continue to sin, Oedipus must also be blinded. Freud considered this blindness to describe the "strange state of mind in which one knows and does not know a thing at the same time" (Rudnytsky I987, p. 2I, from Strachey I953-74, p. II7)-that is, repression. Sorne time after his self-mutilation, Oedipus reconsiders and decides that he may have punished himself too harshly:
And yet, how was I the sinner?
I provoked to self-defense in such a way
that even had I acted with full knowledge,
even then, it never could be called a sin. [Roche I958, p. 97]
Jocasta, dead by her own hand, is never viewed in this light nor is her death lamented. In fact, Oedipus eventually manages to deposit his own shame into Jocasta, saying to her brother, Creon, who succeeds Oedipus as king: "And to her shame she gave me children" (Roche I958, p. 97). Later, his explanation for this transfer of blame continues:
Neither in this marriage then
shall I be called to blame
nor in the way my father died-
on which you harp with so much spite.
Let me ask you this, one simple thing:
if at this moment someone should
step up to murder you,
would you, godly creature that you are,
stop and say: Excuse me, sir, are you my father? [Roche I958, p. I28]
In fact, Oedipus does continue to commit a related, but not explicitly sexual, sin by treating Antigone as an extension of himself and his eyes. He gets another chance to resolve his Oedipus complex, but does not use it wisely. Jocasta is given no such option. A woman has a chance at engulfment only once with her children, who must eventually leave her and forget their profound tiesto her. She is dead to them in this sense, as was Jocasta to her children. She should not stand in their way. Aman continues on once his days with his mother are done. All his women are extensions of him; he gets many more chances to engulf them, as well as to be mothered.
As the oedipal son passes through the stage of relinquishing his mother, he begins to look at other women. Through adolescence and adulthood, he retains the prerogative to evaluate and sexualize all women but his mother, including his own daughters. In total blindness he loses the sexualized gaze, yet even then does not lose his kingly sense of entitlement.
Oedipus, the son, was fated by the gods to become Oedipus, the husband of his mother. Jocasta herself comments that many men, if only in their dreams, have married their mothers. She speaks for masculine entitlement to their mothers and to their dreams and fantasies. She is part of the spoils of the king, the chosen one. She is a medium of exchange between Oedipus and Creon, Oedipus and Laius. lt is not she who calls for the punishment of Oedipus. Instead she comes quite close to acknowledging his entitlement to her. In the traditional arrangement, wives are also mothers to their husbands, supplying emotional and physical sustenance in the form of caring, feeding, cleaning, and the like. So Jocasta is Oedipus' wife/mother. She is neither threatening nor castrating in any way. He is blinded, but it is she who dies for the sin. While she could be passed along to the next king, her brother, Creon, this would undoubtedly turna tragedy into a comedy in men's eyes.
Jocasta is certainly not a person in her own right, but a wife, a prize to the king, someone from whom her children must separate. The connection between her and her children must be rendered invisible as they pass from childhood to the masculine world of the father. As children carry their father's name, they are his and not hers. In inquiring after Oedipus' identity upon his return,