Euripide's Monologue In Medea

I examined the eponymous character’s monologue from Euripides’s dramatic play “Medea”, first performed in Athens in the fourth century B.C. This work serves to lay out the reasons for a woman in Ancient Greek society to resent her role in it.
In discussing marriage, it speaks of the “excess of wealth” or dowry needed to be provided by a woman’s family in order for her to marry, the social cost of not marrying, and the husband’s control over his wife’s body. It then discusses a woman’s need to “manage” her husband, which in this context can be interpreted as keeping his attention and favor. T
The speaker relates that this is necessary because the alternative is a lonely existence to which death would be preferred. Husbands are allowed to go out from the home and seek out companionship, but wives cannot for society insists they keep their “eyes on one alone”. The work reflects well upon the double standard of Greek society, which allowed men to move freely outside the home and extramarital lovers of both genders, while their wives were for the most part sequestered at home and expected to be ever faithful to her husband. …show more content…
In a resounding line, she makes clear of her preference of soldiering over childbirth. This comparison between childbirth and warfare may have been somewhat common. There could have been a cultural perception of them as each gender’s duty to the state, the men to be warriors, the women to provide future warriors. I recall a story that stated in Sparta, the only way for a man or woman to have their name written upon their grave was for the former to die in battle or the latter to die in