ALÉM DA TRAGÉDIA

AGÊNCIA FEMININA E SUBVERSÃO DA JORNADA HEROICA EM ÉDIPO REI, DE SÓFOCLES

Abstract

This article investigates female agency and the subversion of fate in “Oedipus Rex” with a particular focus on the active construction of memory. Jocasta’s suicide by hanging, the queen of Thebes, under the lens of Sartrean philosophy and Nicole Loraux’s analysis (1985), gains a greater symbolic dimension that designates it as an act of resistance and affirmation of identity in the face of tragic fatality. By resignifying her story through memory as an act of constant creation, Jocasta not only challenges tragic determinism, but also establishes a new narrative, aligned with Sartre’s (2005) and Frankl’s (2021; 2014) reflections on freedom and the meaning of life. Death, in Sophocles, acquires a symbolic dimension that goes beyond the individual, becoming a moment of truth and confrontation with finitude, combined with the idea of the Heroine’s Journey towards resignification. The queen’s suicide, inscribed in the memory of the tragedy, reveals the complexity of the female experience and the capacity for agency, even in the face of adversity. The comparison between Oedipus’ and Jocasta’s journeys highlights how memory, as an active construction, shapes identities and narratives, both masculine and feminine, in Sophocles’s Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex.