#ch2

that said, sophocles in particular is so clearly interested in women's silence and the silencing of women! not, like, to the point where i would think that it might've had anything to do with the way he thought about or interacted with real women in real life, but in so many of his plays he's preoccupied with the point at which women stop speaking, and the ways that a (woman's) silent life is akin to death. i'm talking the classic "she exits silently into the house to die" of jocasta and eurydice and deianira, i'm talking the women who fall silent and let the men do all the talking when they're replaced by non-speaking actors halfway through their plays (tecmessa and ismene), i'm talking the women like iole and philomela rendered completely voiceless by the violence done to them and also structurally denied speech by the performance conventions that do not permit them a speaking actor.