Conclusion

Abstract

Abstract The Conclusion summarizes what readers can learn from reading female characters’ emotional wounds in homecoming plays through the lens of trauma studies. It argues that homecoming plays articulate diverse experiences of trauma after war for women, including trauma that arises from chronic conditions of violence and oppression. At the same time, however, these plays also foreclose the possibility of repair within their fabricated social structures, which reflect in a distorted way the social structures and values of fifth-century Athens. The Conclusion also suggests future directions for scholarship in Classics that engages with trauma studies.