Ancient Greek Mythological Women

Women are the people who make up half the population, the people needed to produce other human beings, and yet looked at as inferior beings. Mythological women are shown in the way that society views women in general. They are usually split into two distinct groups, one is viewed as the bad woman and one is the ideal woman. Some women are viewed as old shrews who are cunning, ruthless, and bitter because of the tragedies they have lived. These characteristics are usually reserved for women who are older and have been through enough sadness to change how they view the world. On the other hand, we sometimes also find younger women who are virginal or chaste waiting for their husbands to come back from war or a long journey. When looking at the …show more content…
She is a virtuous woman who spends her days weaving, waiting for her husband to return. Penelope is the physical embodiment of what it means to be a woman in Ancient Greece and how you have to move in the world. She shows what it means to work against a system by being inside of it. Because Penelope waited for Odysseus to come back to her she needed a valid reason for not remarrying. She deceives her suitors by telling them that she is making a funeral shroud for Leartes (Euripides 100-110). Being the honest and virtuous woman she is, allowing how the suitors see her as a way to keep them at arms length. The deception comes at night when she unties the shroud (Euripides 111). In Steven Lowenstam’s “The Shroud of Leartes and Penlope’s Guile”, he says that Penelope keeps this charade up for so long because “when Penelope has completed her work, she will have completed her duty to Laertes and his family, including Odysseus”(Lowenstam 335). She needed a reason to wait because if she didn’t there is a possibility she wouldn’t have waited. As Lowenstam says “in some sense, then, the death garment was Penelope’s, it marked the end of her independence from the suitors” (336). Penelope said that she believed that Odysseus was still alive, so she had to come up with something to allow her to be ready when he came back. She knew that men would be waiting for her to remarry because it was expected of her …show more content…
Due to their preconceived notions she was able to do a lot of things such as killing her children and poisoning Glauce’s dress. Most people in Corinth felt that she was too simple minded and barbaric to be able to do these acts let alone plan them and get away with them. Women are sometimes seen as guile, inferior beings. Medea used this idea as a way to fly under the radar. She does such a good job of deception because she uses her time to plan a place to stay. Medea tells Aegeus she'll help with his sterility and no one finds out that she talked to him(Euripides 713). This is not a typical, hysterical woman, but a woman who has the cunning ability to plan out every act before doing it to make sure not only she doesn’t get caught but that no one follows her has planned for the repercussions of her actions under the noses of those who see her as weak because of her heritage and her gender. Medea laments all the ways in which it is hard to be a woman because of their dowries, arranged marriages, inability to talk to anyone but their husbands, and childbirth(Euripides 230-265). Because of the importance of funeral rites, Medea being able to give them shows she has reached a level of power. She doesn’t allow Jason the right to touch or kiss his children even though he is a male relative ready and willing to do to perform the rites for her (Euripides 1377). Instead she takes