Social Context of Antigone

• Social context is an affect due to an individuals morals, dress code, way of thinking, behaviour, life etc. It is the influence that society has on an individual and it's affects. It can also be though of as supremacy (e.g how men had a higher status than women in Ancient Greece).
• When Antigone was created people lived in fear of Creons decisions as leader. They were fearful of him and the war that surrounded them. They had been forced into a civil war which created a clear separation in Thebes and also led to the arguments of who would be in charge of the government which had just been discovered by the democrats.
• I suppose the target audience for the piece was for men since women were regarded as inferior and were not allowed to watch or hear the plays.
• The beliefs of the target audience was that women were not worth much value and weren't particularly important. Luckily, I think Sophocles was a good and fair man, he saw the disadvantage that females had and wanted to show their importance. He delivered a story that told the audience that women were not burdens, but  instead fierce fiery independent woman. He was the first writer to have a female playing the main role of a character with such strong will. Sophocles wrote about equality and I think he really made his audience think and reevaluate their ways of thinking.
• This contributed to a huge influence on the themes and personality of Antigone. She made the audience realize that women were not silly flirts or animals that should be left in a cage all day, but instead people that just like themselves have complex mindsets of their own. Antigone showed her defiance against Creon and his idealistic creations. In fact I think Ancient Greece was lucky that it didn't allow women to watch the plays just incase they were to take up Antigones role and were inspired by her courageous defiance, leading to an uprise which could have essentially of changed the whole of history and it's roots to equality.
• I think Antigone was very much influenced by the Gods. Her morals were much more open minded and she was much more tied to her beliefs, whereas most of the other towns folk would be influenced by the King who had the upper hand on earth.  Sophocles wrote the play whilst he was amidst a war, he was influenced by his surrounding however chose to try and keep them out as much as possible. Perhaps he was influenced by a friend dying or badly injured (or something along those lines), you have to make a sacrifice and leave the body/leave the friend to die because otherwise you would be an unfair general. 
• Men were thought of as a superior gender and a example of their supremacy is the fact that they were allowed to go attend the Theatre whereas woman were hardly ever allowed.
• Antigone is a very political play. It uses political arguments to trigger off a war which then leads to beliefs which contributed to more disagreements. For example obviously burial is a very sentimental subject but is also closely related to religion and therefore, when the King orders for only one a certain person to be buried but not the other it leads to a bigger uprise which affects the King more than it does his people.