Antigone's Wedding Dress.

The play text sets up the fact that Antigone’s family regards her as nothing more than a child. Each sibling's various infantilizations of Antigone spurs the story to its crux. Ismene bathes and dresses her (Fournier, 4-6) Polynices’ jokes at her whenever Antigone asks him a serious question (Fournier, 12), and Eteocles dismisses her treason by minimizing it to trauma, trying to insinuate she can do no wrong (Fournier, 16). These are just three of many examples of how Antigone’s family continually does not view her as an adult like the rest of them. Honestly, the script reads with this infantilizing tone towards antigone until her scene with Andrastus on page 26, in which suddenly she is called out for her continual questions while never taking action despite the fact that she has all the information she needs to CHOOSE. She just needs to make an inference and decision based on that information instead of waiting for the decision to be made for her (Fournier 26-8).

 

I think that it was important to acknowledge that Ismene is the one choosing what Antigone presents to the world, the guidance from her older sister being evident in her costuming would help to further The Directors concept of Antigone being complacent in her grief and the scripts notion of letting the world around her decide everything in relation to her. For me, taking the agency of her attire away from her would help me further this point. Ismene designed her wedding dress, chose the fabric, the veil, everything down to the hem length.