Cardozo School of Law

On Civil Disobedience, Jurisprudence, Feminism and the Law in the Antigones of Sophoclesand AnouilhAuthor(s): Susan W. TiefenbrunReviewed work(s):Source: Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Summer, 1999), pp. 35-51Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27670201 .Accessed: 11/11/2011 08:04

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

University of California Press and Cardozo School of Law are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserveand extend access to Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature.

http://www.jstor.org

_ f_

On Civil Disobedience, Jurisprudence, Feminism and the Law in the

Antigones of Sophocles and Anouilh Susan W. Tiefenbrun

Antigone's star has shone brightly through the millennia.

The archetype for civil disobedience has claimed a con

stellation of first magnitude emulators.

Robert M. Cover1

/. Introduction

Antigone, one of the first great heroines of civil disobedience and the

inspiration of resistance movements against tyranny,2 is the prototype of

alterity in her resistance to the law. The myth, the character, and the play

Antigone have inspired more than one hundred recreations and interpre tations3 by writers of stature and prominence in the legal and literary communities. Scholars of law, literature, and feminism continue to ana

lyze the play to understand better its jurisprudential underpinnings4 and,

in particular, the difference between natural law and legal positivism as

well as the effectiveness of civil disobedience for legal reform. Thoreau,

noting that men live with "too passive a regard for the moral laws," cited

Antigone as a stirring example of civil disobedience.5 By comparing

Sophocles's Antigone? written in fifth century B.C.E. Athens, and Jean Anouilh's Antigone? written and performed in France in 1944 during the

German Occupation, this article will focus on the connection between

civil disobedience and jurisprudence in ancient and modern legal systems. In Sophocles's Antigone, civil disobedience is represented by the ten

sion between Antigone and Creon, most dramatically in Antigone's act of

defiance, which effectively causes legal reform in Thebes. Despite the

obvious similarities between Antigone and Creon, Sophocles stresses the

differences between their opposing jurisprudential positions on natural

35

law and legal positivism. Sophocles espouses the argument that illegal

protest can accomplish legal reform, but Jean Anouilh does not appear to

agree. In Sophocles's Antigone the mindset of the ruler and the

hegemonic8 political system which produced the unjust law are ultimate

ly reformed by virtue of the insight tragedy naturally produces.

Eventually enlightened by Antigone's non-violent protest, Cr?ons new

understanding has the positive effect of suggesting a move away from a

hegemonic to a pluralistic conception of the law. In contrast, Anouilh's

melodrama does not propose civil disobedience as an effective force for

legal or political reform. In this article I shall try to tease out the under

lying causes for Anouilh's radical change from the Sophoclean source.

II What is Civil Disobedience?

Despite the historical acceptance of this illegal form of protest, civil

disobedience is a confusing concept with no universally accepted defini

tion.9 John Rawls defined civil disobedience as acts that are "public, non

violent, conscientious yet political... done with the aim of bringing about

a change in the law or policies of government."10 Mere dissent,11 protest, or disobedience of the law are not enough to qualify as civil disobedience.

Several criteria are necessary for a particular act of protest to qualify as

civil disobedience.12 The act must be nonviolent, open and visible, ille

gal,13 and performed for a moral purpose to protest an unjust law or to

object to the status quo14 and with the expectation of punishment.15 Civil disobedients may attempt to justify their acts on the basis of a

conflicts of law argument, claiming a moral obligation to perform the ille

gal acts or, as Antigone claimed, an obligation to obey a higher, natural,

or divine law whose authority preempts man-made laws. This line of

argument has deep roots in the history of Western thought: Cicero,

Aquinas, Grotius, Locke, even Thomas Jefferson who inscribed on the

Great Seal of the United States: "Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to

God." St. Thomas Aquinas declared that "human law does not bind a

man in conscience, and if it conflicts with the higher law, human law

should not be obeyed."16 Martin Luther King wrote that "an unjust law

is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law."17

The difficulty inherent in the conflicts of law argument stems from

the vagueness of natural law. It is impossible to codify natural law or to

36

determine what that law actually commands or forbids. Since it is diffi

cult to determine if they are part of a legal system at all, it is also difficult

to determine how these higher laws apply to concrete cases.18

Some argue that the legal system itself needs people who are willing to break the law for political reasons. "The legitimacy of the system itself

requires confrontation with disobedience defended by individuals who

view compliance as immoral or by individuals seeking to persuade lawful

officials to change."19 Some may attempt to adduce a free-speech argument that civil dis

obedience is a form of protected political speech.20 John Rawls compared civil disobedience to public speech.21 The issue in such an argument is to

determine how far the protection of free speech really goes and whether

the form of illegal protest in question is like other protected forms of

communication: gestures, symbolic responses, and other nonverbal acts

which are protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Open and uninhibited political criticism is of such fundamental impor tance in a democracy that such conduct will be protected even when it

may appear otherwise rightly unlawful.22

The question both Sophocles and Anouilh ask literarily but answer

very differently is whether civil disobedience is truly effective in changing an unjust law and in reforming the legal system that created it. To answer

this question one must posit the existence of an objective moral standard

beyond or implicit in the man-made laws. This objective moral standard,

which is referred to in different ways as natural law, divine law, the law of

God, revelation, or universal law, is often compared and contrasted to

human law, which is otherwise referred to as legal positivism. It will be

worth a brief reminder of the cultural context in which Sophocles con

fronted this perennial question.

III. Sophocles, the Sophists, and Natural law

In fifth century Athens the marginalization of natural law was

expressed in edicts or decrees that sometimes criminalized behavior alto

gether appropriate according to natural law norms. The Sophists

expressed a concept of law that differed from mainstream Greek thought,

epitomized in Socrates, who looked upon the laws of Athens as purely and

simply just.23 The Sophists contrasted what they considered to be natu

37

rally right with what is legally right, believing that the unwritten laws

were eternal, unalterable, and emanating from a higher source than the

changing decrees of men.24 Antigone's objection to Cr?ons decree seems

to reflect the Sophistic adherence to natural law. Her defiance thus rep resents an example of a new form of criminal deviance.

Sophocles's tragedy ?

produced in 440 B.C.E. ? does not conclude

that either natural law (the right of the family) or human law (the right of

the state) is supreme. The fact that the play has elicited more than one

hundred different interpretations since its performance in ancient Greece

is a sign of Sophoclean ambiguity and the author's muted refusal to advo

cate one or the other forms of legal system. Antigone and Creon both

come to realize that rigid adherence to one system of law over another has

led them to err. Sophocles's ambiguity marks an interesting impasse in the

jurisprudential debate and invites scholars to consider a more balanced

view of law encompassing features of both natural and positive law.25

Indeed, Antigone and Creon represent the war of the Ancients and

the Moderns in fifth century Athens, which was a city in transition and

bent on establishing democracy. The central dispute in Sophocles's play

is between the "archaic, familial usage and codes of sentiment,"26 repre sented by Antigone, and the "new public rationality of the Periclean

moment,"27 represented by Creon. Ironically, the youthful Antigone rep resents the views of the Ancients, who revered the eternal gods, blood ties,

and natural law. Antigone represents emotion and nature, the "mother

bird" lamenting her empty nest, (423-425) the hunted animal, (433)

Niobe, who clings like close winding ivy on a rock. (826-827) Antigone's

justice is associated with the universal, the immutable, the gods below,

(94, 451, 459-460) death, and Hades. When asked by Creon why she

dares disobey his law, Antigone responds in a famous speech describing the "unwritten laws" and the elements of the natural law she passionately defends:

For me it was not Zeus who made that order.

Nor did that Justice who lives with the gods below

mark out such laws to hold among mankind.

Nor did I think your orders were so strong that you, a mortal man, could over-run

the gods' unwritten and unfailing laws.

38

Not now, nor yesterday's they always live,

and no one knows their origin in time. (450-457)

Creon is older than Antigone, but he represents the Moderns in a

characteristically ironic idiom that identifies Sophocles's particular style. Creon shows admiration for Zeus (487, 1040-1041) and Olympian jus tice which presides over the civic order. Creon mocks Antigone's "rever

ence of Hades," (777, 780) and Antigone, who rejects Olympian justice, is referred to scornfully as the "bride of Hades," the "bride of death."

Creon resides comfortably with the Olympian gods, whereas Antigone is

associated with the chthonic deities of the underworld. Creon rejects

Antigone's belief in the sanctity of blood ties (38, 45-46, 80-81 466-468,

511) which Antigone defends by reveling in the glory of burying her

brother, Polyneices, in defiance of Cr?ons decree. (502)

What is clear from the Sophoclean tragedy is that civil disobedience

does produce positive effects for legal and political reform. In Greek

tragedy the central conflict in which one protagonist is pitted against the

other reflects the basically contradictory nature of law itself, which was

said to be incommensurate with justice or morality.28

IV The Plot of Antigone

The play begins a day after the siege of Thebes, during which both of

Antigone's brothers have been killed. Antigone sees the throne pass from

her father, the ill-fated Oedipus, to Creon, her uncle. Creon orders

Polyneices, the leader of the siege, to remain unburied in Thebes. While

it was legal for Creon to forbid burial in the traduced city, it was not legal for him to forbid a family member to bury her dead outside of Thebes.29

Cr?ons decree is a show of force by a newly-crowned king, who wants to

proclaim and preserve the authority of the state. The penalty for disobe

dience to Cr?ons decree is stoning.

Antigone claims an obligation to bury her brother based on divine

law to which the netherworld gods demand absolute obedience. As

Polyneices's sister, Antigone cannot resist this demand for obedience

based on kinship, blood ties, and an ethical bond. Antigone defies

Cr?ons decree and twice goes out to bury her brother, without the help of her sister, Ismene, who does not think women should defy men in

the polis.

39

Hegel has pointed out that neither Antigone nor Creon ever sees the

other's point of view.30 Both characters demonstrate a basic one-sided

ness. In the course of the events of the play, however, each character

comes to know that the other is partially right and partially wrong, and

each acknowledges his/her own guilt. After her incarceration by Creon

in an underground cave and just before her suicide by hanging, Antigone

acknowledges that her great suffering proves her error. But the main

epiphany comes to Creon after suffering the tragic loss of his son,

Haemon, and the death of his grief-stricken wife, Eurydice. Unlike the

typical unswerving classical hero, Creon listens to the message of the

Chorus and Tiresias, realizes his mistakes, and changes. The foreshad

owing of this change is seen in Cr?ons early commutation of Antigone's sentence from stoning to imprisonment in an underground tomb where

she can "pray to Death for life." Creon realizes his mistake in not

respecting customary laws and in excluding laws of the old tradition

where the dead are buried in the earth: "I've come to fear it's best to hold

the laws of old tradition to the end of life."31 (1112-1113) Having learned the error of his ways and the unjustness of his laws, Creon final

ly admits guilt and decides, too late, to free Antigone and to change the

law. Even though Creon is one of the few who remains alive at the end

of the play, his life ends tragically, as he is reduced to "nothing more than

nothing now." (1320) At the end Creon is a man stripped of dignity and

longing for death.

V Civil Disobedience in Sophocles's Antigone

In Sophocles's Antigone civil disobedience is represented by the ten

sion between two different characters who are the pillars of multiple bipo lar oppositions established in the play: man/woman; old/young; public

need/private vision; the living/the dead; human law /divine law;

Olympian gods/chthonic gods; manipulative rationality/emotionality;

patriarchal lineage/matrilinear kinship, etc. These oppositions reflect ten

sions in the law and in the society of Athens in fifth century B.C.E. The

most dramatic form of tension is Antigone's act of civil disobedience.

Antigone is a true civil disobedient who espouses a belief in natural

law, in the importance of private, family ties, and in the efficacy of resis

tance against man-made laws that are unjust. Antigone's action, in defi

no

anee of Cr?ons decree is non-violent, public, and committed for the

moral purpose of protesting Cr?ons unjust law. Antigone willingly

accepts her cruel punishment, but her fascination with death and the

underworld has been misinterpreted by many critics. Antigone's attach

ment to the gods of Hades and the underworld is not at all due to her

"love" of Polyneices, or her "death wish" but rather constitutes the sym

bolic and literary representation of Antigone's reverence for the

immutable and eternal natural law, which is associated logically with ever

lasting death rather than with fleeting and temporal life. Antigone fears

dying "with a lack of grace." (97) Like all tragic heroines her goal is to

die with honor. Her act of civil disobedience accords her that honor.

Some also consider Creon a civil disobedient who violates natural law

requiring burial of the dead. Charles Maurras ? a right-wing thinker,

greatly influential during the Vichy period ? called Creon "a rebel" and

saw Creon, not Antigone, as the main protagonist in the play: "The rebel

against civil law and order is not Antigone. It is Creon. Creon has against him the gods of religion, the fundamental laws of the polis, and the feel

ings of the living polis. What Sophocles sets out to show is the punish ment of the tyrant who has sought to free himself from divine laws."32

Creon stands for the principles of law and order and the superiority of men over women in a universe governed by gender difference.

However, Creon is not a true civil disobedient because he is the law.

While his decree is public and visible, the motive for his act is neither eth

ical nor generalizable but stubbornly personal. Creon professes the need

for power ("...now it comes that I hold all the power and the royal

throne") (172-173) to maintain discipline in a stable polis ("There is no

greater wrong than disobedience. This ruins cities, this tears down our

homes, this breaks the battle-front in panic-rout. If men live decently it is

because discipline saves their very lives for them."). (672-677) In the fifth

century B.C.E. loyalty to uve polis was not just an abstract cause; it was a

necessity. War between city-states was the normal condition, and defeat

meant enslavement. The only way to preserve individual freedom was by the constant efforts and sacrifice of all citizens.33 Moreover, Creon does

not expect punishment, which is the sine qua non of civil disobedience.

Therefore, Creon is not a true example of civil disobedience.

Notwithstanding the sincerity of Cr?ons belief in discipline to keep the ship of state "sailing straight," (189) one cannot help fearing Cr?ons

41

intransigence and the Leviathan of state power he unleashes. While

Pericles gloried in the individual liberty that Athens gave its citizens, he

also reminded the people that the polis is more important than the indi

vidual.34 Cr?ons form of government requires power and results in the

rise of dictatorship; Cr?ons rule includes oppression, paranoia, intimida

tion, and false accusations of conspiracy ("These are the people ? oh it's

clear to me ? who have bribed these men and brought about the deed.")

(294-296) and ("I charge Ismene too. She shared the planning of this

burial." (489-490). Cr?ons decree, which flies in the face of custom and

natural law, is less an expression of his political philosophy and more a

show of his force and fearlessness ("For I believe that who controls the

state and does not hold to the best plans of all, but locks his tongue up

through some kind of fear, that he is worst of all who are or were."). (179

181) His decree is a display of raison d'etat, the willful establishment of

his absolute authority.

Antigone's act of civil disobedience has both positive and negative effects. Antigone's illegal act of protest is necessary, though she is doomed

by her tragic fate through her family ties with Oedipus. Antigone's act,

perpetrated not by freedom of choice but by force of fate, causes tragedy for Creon and his family. Nevertheless, it proves to be effective. Through his tragic suffering, Creon is enlightened by the actions of Antigone, and

his insight has a direct effect on reforming the flawed legal system. Robin

West reminds us that Antigone does not commit the act for the purpose of reforming the legal system but merely to follow her tragic fate. "Unlike

the romantic, the tragedian perceives her illegal conduct not as a freely chosen means of dramatizing and ultimately correcting a flawed legal

order, but as the sole moral alternative; for her, there is no truly human

choice. The tragedian is not engaging in a free political act, thereby

affirming the reformed future of the flawed system within which the act

occurs. She is engaging in a necessary moral, human act and thereby

affirming a higher morality and her own obedience to it."35 While I agree with West, I believe it is important to recognize that the byproduct of

Antigone's action is legal reform. To insist too strongly on Antigone's lack

of freedom is to nullify the very act of Antigone's civil disobedience,

which is defined as an action committed for the moral purpose of uphold

ing a belief in a higher good.

42

VI The Sophoclean Synthesis

Many readers of Antigone have observed a profound similarity between Creon and Antigone. As George Steiner puts it, "Creon is a

commensurate counterpoise to Antigone; each reads himself in the other,

and the language of the play points to this fatal symmetry."36 Antigone's

intransigent treatment of her sister, Ismene, is analogous to Cr?ons treat

ment both of his son, Haemon, and of Antigone. Neither Creon nor

Antigone is flexible. Both are dogmatic in their respective beliefs. But

Sophocles's message is a plea for synthesis, moderation, and unity of the

two types of law into a more balanced system. Through the constant jux

taposition of Antigone and Creon, like a symphony of similarity and dif

ference, Sophocles achieves a "dialectic of kindred opposites"37 and an

understated plea for balance in the legal system.

Jean Anouilh's Antigone reflects the horrific events of the Second

World War; Anouilh himself said: "Sophocles's Antigone, which I read and

reread and knew by heart forever, was a sudden shock for me during the

war... and I rewrote it in my way, with the resonance of the tragedy we

were living."38 It was performed first in 1944 in German occupied France

and at other times during the Occupation. Although from 1939-1945 the

progress of the theater was disrupted by the war which shattered civilized

life throughout the world, under the German Occupation the French

stage was somehow kept alive.39 The French theater of this period was

marked by revivals of classical works like Anouilh's recreation of

Sophocles's tragedy, which was itself performed often in Nazi Germany.40

Although Anouilh admired Sophoclean dramaturgy, Anouilh's play is

dramatically different in form, content, and language from Sophocles's

play. Anouilh's literary changes reflect the nature of parody which attacks

vice and folly by satire and irony in order to mask the author's subversive

message. Anouilh's text also rejects the genre of tragedy and produces instead a metatragedy lacking conventional Aristotelian drama and ten

sion. Anouilh debunks the tragic heroine, calls into question tragedy

itself, and raises serious doubts about the effectiveness of civil disobedi

ence.41 Anouilh recreates the Antigone of Sophocles in very different

terms not of the heroic but of the absurd.

The Sophoclean Antigone is a dark tragedy with no comic relief42

which contains, in a disguised and literary form, a surprisingly optimistic

43

message about the effectiveness of civil disobedience for legal reform.

Although Anouilh's play is melodramatic with several light passages added

for comic relief (like the colorful conversations of Cr?ons guards), Anouilh's message about the effectiveness of civil disobedience is pes

simistic, negative, and representative of the tone of the theater of the

absurd.

Such a radical change from the original is troublesome. One is

tempted to ask why Anouilh even bothered to rewrite Sophocles's

Antigone if he disagreed with Sophocles's basic premise about the effec

tiveness of civil disobedience. This kind of literary disparity invites the

reader to think about the effects of the political and cultural context on

the author who had to contend with the German presence in order to

produce his play.

Indeed, it is very tempting to interpret Anouilh's play as a dramatiza

tion of France's political problems of the 1940s. The pragmatic collabo

rationist policies of the Vichy regime are exemplified in Creon who can

be contrasted to the idealistic intransigence of Charles de Gaulle's Free

French forces and the Resistance movement, which are embodied in

Antigone.43 Rather than reduce the universal quality of Anouilh's play by this local interpretation, it seems more useful to consider the contempo

rary pressures on the playwright. Anouilh may have felt restricted in the

freedom of his speech by the presence of Germans and the Vichy collab

orationists. Like many great writers before him, Anouilh turned to the

force of parody and the devices of political irony and satire to escape cen

sorship. The effect on the audience is equivocal. Anouilh's Antigone is more vulnerable, more self-doubting than

Sophocles's. At one point Anouilh's Antigone even renounces her decision

to protest the king's decree by covering the body of her brother. Anouilh's

Antigone is not a philosopher44 bent on proving the superiority of divine

law over human law. Rather, Anouilh's Antigone, impassioned, youthful, maternal must, by her act of defiance, simply protect her dead brother.45

Anouilh adds new scenes, like the romantic ball, Antigone's arrest, a

love scene between Antigone and her betrothed Haemon (Cr?ons son),

and Antigone's dictation to the guard of a farewell letter to Haemon. In

the Sophoclean tragedy, the poignant scene between Haemon and Creon

is brief and pits an excessively obedient, admiring, and diplomatic son

against his autocratic father. In Anouilh's play the scene between Creon

44

and Haemon is longer, presents the picture of a more rebellious young Haemon who is desperately in love with Antigone and deeply disap

pointed in his father whom he sees, for the first time, as an unyielding

tyrant.

Anouilh rewrites Sophocles's guards into a new symbol of "numbing

conformity and moral apathy"46 Anouilh's guards represent the indiffer

ent political henchmen employed by the tyrant to enforce the letter of the

law. Anouilh's guards are smug, self-righteous, and tranquil as they arrest

Antigone.47 Jonas, Cr?ons scapegoat, is a reluctant spokesman, cringing, and stammering as he fearfully approaches Creon the tyrant. The guards

play a more significant role in the plot of Anouilh's play, and their comic

depiction makes it difficult but not impossible to identify their indiffer

ence with the excessively "civilized" Nazi SS officers. Anouilh's guards

represent blind obedience to duty, obsession with honors and promotion, a lack of imagination, and an absence of any sense of culpability. They are

oblivious to tragic suffering.48 In Anouilh's Antigone Jonas, the guard, needs to consider his "own safety" (439-440) before anything else. He is

a comic character like Falstaff, a caricature sympathetic to Antigone's

plight but afraid to speak up in her defense.49 (504-505) In the arrest

scene Anouilh reveals the darker side of the guards's unthinking obedi

ence, and conformity. The guards accuse Antigone of being a prostitute, an exhibitionist, a madwoman, and they compare her to an animal or a

demon. They marginalize Antigone, reducing her to the status of the per

verted, criminal, female Other.50 In Anouilh's play it is not Creon but the

guards who represent evil, the creatures of the herd, the ultimate sur

vivors, and the "tranquil inheritors of the earth."

VII Anouilh and Existentialism

Like Sophocles's Antigone, Anouilh's Antigone is a rebel. But

Anouilh's Antigone is in existential revolt.51 The existential rebel is a Neo

Romantic raging against existence, ashamed of being human, revolted by the body itself. One of the strongest identifying features of the existen

tial drama is its attitude toward the flesh.52 Polyneices's rotting carcass is

the symbol of existential rot which is the microcosm of the world in 1944.

Antigone's own body approaches this dark view of the world. In

Anouilh's play Antigone is dark, skinny, and not physically "beautiful" in

45

the traditional sense. According

to Anouilh, Antigone's beauty comes

from within, by virtue of her deed, which is seen as nonetheless absurd.

Antigone's link to Oedipus is stressed throughout Anouilh's play, and her

stubborn pride, seen by Creon as insubordination and insolence, is

explained by her fate and her father: she is, after all, "la fille d'Oedipe." Unlike Antigone, Ismene is depicted as the woman of sensuous beau

ty incarnate but a woman who, in contrast to her rebellious sister, is

unwilling to act insubordinately even if its purpose is to protest an unjust law. Ismene plays a more important role in Anouilh's play than in

Sophocles's tragedy. In drawing the reader's attention to the competition between the two sisters, Anouilh reinforces the view that Antigone's act of

civil disobedience is undertaken for reasons of personal desire and not for

adherence to a philosophical belief in the moral exigencies of natural law.

Nevertheless, even in the twentieth century play, the motivation for

Antigone's act is not banal. Antigone in fact spurns the "happiness"

sought by Ismene and Creon, and she considers the quest for happiness as immeasurably inferior to the satisfaction she will gain from being true

to herself. The motivation of Antigone's act is based on a refusal to com

promise,53 and in that refusal she sees herself as different from Ismene,

from Creon, and from the guards ? all survivors who compromise.

Antigone, like no one else in the play, is the Other, the one who is unwill

ing to compromise her principles.54

Creon, too, is a very different figure. Anouilh paints the picture of a

new Creon, a leader in an ambiguous role, a leader without freedom in a

state governed by the Rule of Law. Creon both obeys and disobeys cer

tain laws. Cr?ons view of the world is utterly meaningless; he denies his

own edict; his vision of the world is one of chaos which can only be saved

(but is actually perpetuated by) absolute authority. In Anouilh's parody, Creon does not like power, which is an indignity that overwhelms him.

Cr?ons regime, supposedly one of Reason, is based instead on absurdity,

meaninglessness, and deceit. The putrid carcass, left to rot because of

Cr?ons edict, symbolizes Cr?ons absurd universe in which law does not

equate with justice.55 In Anouilh's play Creon is more human, complains that he has a hard job, and feels sorry for himself because he often has to

do what he doesn't want to do. He is also a man willing to make special deals with Antigone, willing to forgive and forget, if only she would agree to help him save face. It appears that the only reason Creon kills

46

Antigone is to preserve his image of absolute authority. Totally lacking in

integrity and adherence to a particular philosophy, he mocks "natural

law" unabashedly, calling it "absurd." (72)

A far cry from Sophocles's committed leader who stands firmly for the

principles of human law and the sanctity of the polis, Anouilh's Creon

actually considers himself to be like Antigone and ironically calls himself

"a young Antigone at 20." (91) Cr?ons lack of self-awareness is at the

heart of the play's irony. Creon is fundamentally quite different from the

passionate and sensitive Antigone, and his shocking reaction to his own

wife's death is one of cold indifference. He anachronistically holds a 5

o'clock cabinet meeting (122) right after learning of Eurydice's tragic sui

cide. Unlike Sophocles's Creon, Anouilh's Creon never gains insight into

the unjustness of his totalitarian regime, never changes the unjust law he

decrees, and never learns about himself from Antigone's act of civil dis

obedience. Creon remains Creon and carries on business as usual until

the end of the play. In Anouilh's play it is not Creon who is enlightened but Antigone

who in the end realizes how much damage she has caused by her act of

civil disobedience. Such a view of the story informed Conor Cruise

O'Brien, in his remarks on the tragic futility of events in Belfast, when he

stressed the negative effects of civil disobedience and cited Antigone as a

perfect example of this dangerous practice:

The act of non-violent civil disobedience, whereby

Antigone sets out to inter Polyneices breeds utmost vio

lence: it brings on her own suicide, Haemon's attempt to

slay his father and his suicide, the suicide of Eurydice, and the devastation of Cr?ons personal existence and

political authority... a stiff price for that handful of dust

on Polyneices.56

Thus, Anouilh's pessimistic message about the ineffectiveness of civil

disobedience is entirely different from Sophocles's more optimistic view.

In Anouilh's Antigone Creon wins and turns the world of civil disobedi

ence topsy turvey!

47

VIII Conclusion

Anouilh's play is a parody of classical Greek tragedy, of civil disobedi

ence and its effectiveness, and of absolute rule. Although Anouilh's

drama57 is less weighty than Sophocles's classical tragedy, Anouilh's absur

dist view58 is nonetheless more negative with respect to the effectiveness

of civil disobedience to reform the legal system. Anouilh's Antigone is

encoded in an existentialist discourse representative of the particular moment in legal and political history in which the play was written and

performed.

Many have criticized Anouilh's negativity and radically different por

trayal of the character of Antigone, whom Sophocles painted as a tragic heroine. Critics claim that Anouilh invalidated the myth of Antigone by

marginalizing her and calling her names: "un sale caract?re." Some say

Anouilh substituted a "hysterical adolescent" for a Greek tragic heroine.59

Anouilh's Antigone persists in an "absurd and vain revolt, even though she

has a choice."60 Anouilh's Antigone is not tragic at all. Her act is absurd

and committed not in the name of personal happiness, but for question able motivations associated with egotism and individualism. Antigone is

a mere actress playing the role of the tragic heroine and reducing the hero

ine's heavy responsibility to an absurd self-involved search for self-worth.

While these critical views have validity, they do not sufficiently take

into account the repressive political context in which Anouilh's play was

written. Anouilh's intentional distortion of the original Greek myth and

his parody of Sophocles's tragedy enable the writer and his public to revis

it, in the light of the tragic events of the first half of the twentieth centu

ry, the stunning Sophoclean image of civil disobedience to positive law.

The author wishes to extend her deepest appreciation to her research assistant, Annie

Urgurlyan, for her assistance with the preparation of this article.

1 Robert M. Cover, Justice Accused: Antislavery and the judicial Process (New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1975), p.l.

2 Lloyd Weinreb, Natural Law and Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), p.21.

48

3 George Steiner, Antigones (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), p. 121.

4 See Robin West, "Jurisprudence an<l Gender," in Feminist Legal Theory: Foundations, D.

Kelly Weisberg, ed. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), pp.86- 87, especially

her argument that modern jurisprudence is "masculine" and the rule of law neither

recognizes nor values intimacy nor individuation, which is what women

long for. See also

Theodore Ziolkowski, The Mirror of Justice (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1997), pp. 144-152.

5 Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1849; Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1960),

p.232, cited in Louis Rene Beres, "The Oslo Agreements in International Law, Natural

Law, and World Politics," \ A Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law7'15,

728 (1997).

6 Sophocles, Antigone in The Complete Greek Tragedies, D. Grene and R. Lattimore, eds.

and trans. (E. Wyckoff, 1954), pp.162-209.

7 Jean Anouilh, Antigone, D. Grossvogel, ed. (Cambridge: Integral Eds., 1959).

8 See Peter Murphy, "Postmodern Perspectives and Justice," in Postmodernism and Law, D.

Patterson, ed. (1984), p. 125.

9 See Mark Edward DeForrest, "Civil Disobedience: Its Nature and Role in the American

Legal Landscape," 33 Gonzaga Law Review 653, 654 (1997/98).

10 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p.365.

11 See Abe Fortas, Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobedience (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1968), for a distinction between legal dissent and illegal civil disobedience.

12 DeForrest, supra note 9 at 655.

13 Carl Cohen, Civil Disobedience: Conscience, Tactics, and the Law (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1971), p.4: "An act of civil disobedience is an act that breaks the law."

14 DeForrest, supra note 9 at 656.

15 See, generally, id.

16 See Heinrich Rommen, The Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History and

Philosophy, Thomas R. Hanley, trans. (New York: B.Herder Book Company, 1947), dis

cussing Thomistic philosophy.

17 Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail," in Why We Cant Wait (New

York: Harper and Row, 1963), pp.84-85. See also Susan Tiefenbrun, "Semiotics and

Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail," 4 Cardozo Studies in Law and

Literature!^ (1992).

18 See Cohen, supra note 13 at 114.

19 Martha Minow, "Breaking the Law: Lawyers and Clients in Struggles for Social Change, "

52 Harvard Law Review 723, 741 (1991).

20 Leslie Gielow Jacobs, "Applying Penalty Enhancements to Civil Disobedience: Clarifying

the Free Speech Clause Model to Bring the Social Value of Political Protest into the

Balance/' 59 Ohio State Law Journal 185, 197 (1998), discussing civil disobedience as

expressive conduct.

21 Rawls, supra note 10 at 366.

49

22 Cohen, supra note 13 at 179, citing The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254

(1964), protecting the "proud national commitment to the principle that debate on pub lic issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide open, and that it may well include

vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officiais."

23 Rommen, supra note 16 at 8.

24 Id., at 9.

25 Andrea L. Timoll, "Antigone, Irigaray, and the Archetypical Problematic: The Classical

Opposition of Human and Divine Law," 19 Queens Law Journal 583, 593 (1994).

26 Steiner, supra note 3 at 182.

27 Id, at 182.

28 Id. y at 152: "Since the tragic poets present a view of law as divided in itself and as never

fully positioned to be commensurate with justice, they expose the institutions as a fiction

rather than a simple unconflicted act of reason."

29 Weinreb, supra note 2 at 271-272. Thebans did not permit the burial of the enemy dead,

and this was a common theme in Greek literature (Aeschyles, Seven Against Thebes,

Euripedes, The Suppliant Women). Polyneices was a traitor and the law of Athens pro hibited the burial of traitors in Attica. But even traitors were not denied burial alto

gether. See Robert Coleman, "The Role of the Chorus in Sophocles's Antigone," 198

Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 7-8 (1972), cited in Weinreb at 272.

30 G.W.R Hegel's "Interpretation of Sophocles's Antigone" is found in Hegel,

Phenomenology of Spirit, A.V. Miller, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977),

chap.6, secA; and Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art I, T.M. Knox, trans. (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1975), p.221. See also David A. Reidy, "Antigone, Hegel and

the Law: An Essay," 19 Legal Studies Forum 239 (1995), for an interesting analysis of

Hegel's interpretation of the play. Cf, Elizabeth Villiers Gemmette, "Antigone, Creon,

and Captain Vere: A Response to David A. Reidy," 19 Legal Studies Forum 273 (1995).

31 All references from Sophocles's Antigone are from the David Grene and Richmond

Lattimore edition, supra note 6. Verses will be cited in the body of the article.

32 Charles Maurras, Antigone V??rge-Mere de L'Ordre (1948), cited in Steiner, supra note 3

at 187.

33 Bernard Knox, The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy (1963; reprinted,

University of California, 1983), p.85.

34 Id, at 86.

35 West, supra note 4 at 201.

36 Steiner, supra note 3 at 184.

37 Id, at 185.

38 Jean Anouilh, Oedipe ou le Roi Boiteux (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1986), cited in Andrew

Hunwick, "Trag?die et Dramaturgie: Les Ambiguit?s dans l'Antigone d'Anouilh," 96

Revue d'Histoire Litt?raire de la France 290, 293 (1996).

39 Allardyce Nicoll, World Drama from Aeschylus to Anouilh (London: George G. Harrap,

1951), p.897.

50

40 Ziolkowski, supra note 4 at 145

41 Gary S. Meltzer, "Subversive Comedy in the Antigones of Sophocles and Anouilh," 12

Classical and Modern Literature: A Quarterly 343, 345 (1992): "Anouilh's use of comic

relief is to call into question the dignity of his heroine and the meaning of her tragic ges

ture."

42 "Humor is unknown to Greek tragedy." See Marc Eli Blanchard, "The Reverse View:

Greece and Greek Myths in Modern French Theater, "29 Modern Drama 41, 42 (1986).

43 Christopher Smith, Jean Anouilh, Life, Work, and Criticism (Baltimore: York Press, 1985),

p.24.

44 Cf, B.A. Lenski, Jean Anouilh: Stages in Rebellion (New York: Humanities Press, 1975),

p.43: "Antigone's and Joan's rebellions are based on exalted heroic will rather than private

feelings."

45 Paul Vandromme, Jean Anouilh, Un Auteur et ses Personnages (Paris: La Table Ronde,

1965), pp.98-99.

46 Meltzer, supra note 41 at 330.

47 Id, at 353.

48 Id, at 358.

49 Id., at 349.

50 Id., at 354.

51 Robert Brustein, The Theater of Revolt (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1962), p.27.

52 Id, at 28.

53 See Lenski, supra note 44 at 37 for a discussion of the theme of compromise in Anouilh's

theater.

54 Smith, supra note 43 at 26.

55 Ruban Hewitson, "Anouilh's Antigone: A Coherent Structure," 17 Australian Journal of French Studies 167, \77 (1980).

56 Steiner, supra note 3 at 190, citing Conor Cruise O'Brien's lecture in Belfast in 1968,

reprinted in The Listener (BBC Publications, London, 10/1968).

57 Philip Thody refuses to classify Anouilh's play as a

tragedy, and many literary critics have

discussed the question of its classification as tragedy

or melodrama. See Hunwick, supra note 38 at 291-293.

58 Hunwick, supra note 38 at 291: "The greatness of the Greek tragedy is reduced in

Anouilh to a 'tragedy of the absurd.'"

59 Philip Thody, cited in Hunwick, id., at 309.

60 Hunwick, id., at 296.

51