Unveiling Female Feelings for Objects: Deianeira and Her ὌPΓΑΝΑ in Sophocles' Trachiniai

Abstract

In Objects of the Dead, sociologist Margaret Gibson investigates how modern Australians utilize material culture in dealing with the death of loved ones. “Death reconstructs our experience of personal and household objects in particular ways,” she notes. It also confronts us with “the strangeness of realizing that things have outlived persons.” Hence “the materiality of things is shown to be more permanent than the materiality of the body” (Gibson 2008.1). Inspired by these insights, I wish to bring into focus some objects featured in the narrative of the death of Deianeira, the wife of Heracles, in Sophocles’ Trachiniai, a tragedy produced in Athens in 450–40 bce. These objects are mundane domestic instruments (organa); nevertheless, they provoke the tears of Deianeira when she grabs them just before committing suicide. What are these organa, defined as familiar tools that she frequently used, and how should her emotional last encounter with them be understood? Although these material objects have not drawn a lot of