The Bacchae's Others

When I first began reading Soyinka’s adaptation of The Bacchae, it was easy to see Dionysos as “the other." He was referred to as the outsider, he is the ‘stranger who came to town’ causing chaos and disruption. But I also see Dionysos as having the most power in the play. He is the catalyst of change. Dionysos enters the play with intentions of manipulating the people against Pentheus, which he does successfully. There are definitely situations where ‘the other’ holds the power or ignites fear in the mass of people, but why wasn’t that how I always pictured ‘the other‘? I originally held otherness in terms of marginalized people and my assumption has always been that marginalized people hold the least power over the masses. In this definition of otherness, I would argue the only real ‘others’ in the play are the Bacchante women. It seems they are the embodiment of the chaos, in a drinking frenzy at the top of the mountain, but we rarely see them present on stage. They are referred to over and over; Pentheus orders to have them chained up and disgraces their actions, Dionysos is using them as pawns to support his power over Pentheus. It seems the women are in the least control, and this proves to be true when Agave doesn’t comprehend the actions of killing her son Pentheus. Perhaps the death of Pentheus was supposed to happen in order to restore the rights of the people, to help Thebes reclaim what it is to be human; but Agave had no choice in her contribution to the process. If anything, she is the other in the play, pushed like a pawn. So both Dionysos and Agave fit the boxed definitions of what it is to be an “other” and yet both are on opposite ends of the spectrum.

In a global context, I now question what underlying statements are being made about women's roles in society. In both Euripides' version and Soyinka's version of The Bacchae the women hold the least power. In a simple analysis, I think this inadvertently puts a negative hold on cross-cultured views of women.