The aim of this essay is to examine some feminine characters whose distinctive and essential feature is an intense grief, caused by an also intense feeling. That sorrow is very strongly –and very similarly– revealed both through literary and iconography evidences, that represent their continual –repeated– expressions of «passive» affliction or pathetic and «active» grief, and show besides important analogies between them. These suffering women are famous epic and tragic heroines, and also some goddesses: Penelope and Phaidra (wives in love), Electra and Cassandra (affectionate daughters and sisters), Andromache, Hecuba and Niobe (human loving mothers), Demeter, Thetis and Eos (divine loving mothers).
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