Stephen Schwartz's song, Defying Gravity, contains a very bold statement. “I'm done playing by the rules of someone else's game and accepting limitations because someone says they're right.” This is something many women have the audacity to think but never say out loud. However, there are two women who, despite being only in the play, had the courage to say it. In the plays Antigone, by Sophocles, and A Doll's House, by Henrik Ibsen, these two courageous young women, although very distant in time, discover that they do not like the limitations that society imposes on women. In Sophocles' play, a 5th century noble woman, Antigone, defies the laws of the government while trying to respect the laws of the gods when she attempts to give her brother a proper burial. In Ibsen's play A Doll's House, set in 19th-century Norway, Nora, a middle-class woman, deceives her husband to save his life, but then realizes that he is not the man she thought he was either. Both Ibsen and Sophocles portray the timeless theme of a woman finding her identity by overcoming the many barriers and restrictions that patriarchal society imposes on them through the following areas and characteristics: expectation of being subservient to men, assumption of being incompetent, and desperation to remain acceptable. from society after death. Sophocles and Ibsen portray Antigone and Nora as inferior and subservient to their male counterparts. One such example is evident at the beginning of A Doll's House when Torvald asks his wife Nora if she had eaten macaroons. Nora gives him a very feminine answer. “I should not think of doing what you disapprove of” (Ibsen 145). This is the response men would expect from a woman. This quote shows… middle of the paper… once they realize their own is in danger, they do absolutely everything in their power to reverse the ruin. Sophocles and Henrik Ibsen both do an exceptional job of portraying the theme. of a woman finding her own identity. They do this through society's expectation that a woman is submissive and inferior to a man, society's assumption that a woman is incompetent, and a woman's desperate attempt to remain fit in society and maintain her good name. These two works will remain linked to modern times for many years to come. Works Cited Ibsen, Henrik. A doll's house. World Literature: An Anthology of Great Stories, Poetry, and Drama. Columbus, Ohio: McGraw Hill Glencoe, 2004.140-202. Print.Sophocles. Antigone. World Literature: An Anthology of Great Stories, Poetry, and Drama. Columbus, Ohio: McGraw Hill Glencoe, 2004. 14-57. Press.