A Theatre of Vulnerability: Lamentation as a Gendered Self-Narration in Sophocles’ Antigone

This chapter offers a new reading of Antigone’s lamentation (lines 806–928) as a specifically gendered vocal performance in Sophocles’ tragic language. Lamentation is a ritual linguistic structure traditionally attributed to female voices. It has therefore become a relevant topic for studies on women and gender in ancient Greek society and literature. This chapter analyses lexical elements, linguistic formulas, and narrative descriptions in the agonistic exchange between Antigone and the Chorus of Theban elders. My reading focuses on the gender parameter in Antigone’s speech, in which she interprets her life as a constant and ongoing movement searching for a place where she fully belongs. Firstly, she compares herself to Kore/Persephone, daughter of Demeter, imagining her own ideal marriage to Hades. Secondly, she refers to the myth of Niobe, daughter of Tantalus and mother of many sons and daughters, who was punished by the gods after boasting of her fertility. Ultimately, she remarks that she is Jocasta’s and Oedipus’ offspring, which makes her both Polyneices’ and Eteocles’ sister. She continuously evokes and reaffirms these ties, considering them to be more important than the link with Haemon that would make her a wife and a mother. I argue that Antigone uses the performance of mourning in order to stage her own vulnerability and that the Chorus provides active engagement in her selfnarration. The conceptual framework that informs this chapter is the “vulnerability paradigm” in feminist theory, which interprets vulnerability in positive terms, as an idea that enhances a demand for self-determination rather than a request for recognition.