Antigone & Adoor's Rajamma

In "The Antigone Complex, Ethics & the invention of feminine desire", Cecilia Sjoholm, Professor of Aesthetics at Sodertorn University, argues what if psychoanalysis had chosen Antigone rather than Oedipus? Freud's notion of the Oedipus complex had proven to be an inadequate model for the understanding of femininity & feminine desire for many of those engaged in that issue from a social or political viewpoint, & Antigone enables us to discuss some of the most pertinent questions from new angles.

If in Sophocles' play Antigone sacrifices her life for her brother, in Adoor Gopalakrishnan's acclaimed film "The Rat Trap", the protagonist's sister, Rajamma, also sacrifices her life for her bachelor  brother, waiting on him hand & foot, denying herself all her feminine desires. Another sister, Sridevi, is like Sophocles' Ismene, not so self-sacrificing as Rajamma, & actually elopes with her lover, as she knows full well that her brother will not arrange her marriage, as he has to give away her share of the ancestral property. At the end of the film, Rajamma collapses& is hospitalised, may be to recover or to find her final freedom in death.