Representation of women in Athenian tragedy Representation of women in Athenian tragedy The representation of women in Athenian tragedy was performed exclusively by men and it is likely (although the evidence is not conclusive) that it was performed solely for men as well. In a society that valued women’s silence, their predominance in the most public of Athenian art-forms constitutes a paradox. Only one of the surviving 32 plays has no female characters: Sophocles' "Philoctetes". Female tragic choruses also outnumber the male choruses by twenty-one to ten. Macaria, in the "Heracleidae" states that "for a woman, silence and self control are best." The philosopher Xenophon thought
Castration anxiety of the concepts related to penis envy were among his greatest accomplishments. However, these are also his most criticized theories as well—most famously by Karen Horney. Freud derived this term from the Greek tragedy "Oedipus Rex". In this tragedy, the main character, Oedipus, kills his father and marries a woman whom he does not know is his mother. Given this irony, Freud used the term Oedipus complex to indicate this unconscious desire. According to Freud, the Oedipus complex relates to a universal wish that a boy has, unknowingly, to have his mother all to himself by the removal of his