Medea: A Feminist Cry
The majority of the plays written in Ancient Greece diminish women. Women were put into the same category as slaves and children. For the most part women were treated as objects instead of actual people. Women were given to men as time during times of war. Women were meant to stay at home and do chores or other womanly things like sew and raise children. They were never expected to speak up when a man made a decision that they did not agree with. They were supposed to take the back seat to their husbands. Medea was different, she didn’t sit back and let her husband treat her as an object that could be left in the corner and forgotten. She took a stand helping Jason on his quest and took revenge on him when he betrayed …show more content…
She confronts him on this and uses her wittiness to see that he was not being honest with her. She claimed that if there wasn’t a problem he shouldn’t have to hide anything from her. She was showing that they should have both been part of the plan if it was only to gain a higher status for the family. When Medea is being left by her husband she laments and even contemplates suicide because of how broken her heart was. During her period of depression her nurse claims that she had a feeling that Medea was planning something vicious.(Puchner 746) After she gets past the emotional shock she goes on to get revenge on Jason for what he has done. She shows that women don’t have to sit back and be hurt but they should take the strength of the emotion that they feel and use it to fight back.
During Medea’s revenge it is apparent that Euripides is showing supremacy to women through the little things that normally people would think as feminine and harmless by showing them as weapons. The objects are a simile for women by the way that on the outside they might seem just beautiful and dainty and harmless but on the inside they can be just as strong and destructive as men
The majority of the plays written in Ancient Greece diminish women. Women were put into the same category as slaves and children. For the most part women were treated as objects instead of actual people. Women were given to men as time during times of war. Women were meant to stay at home and do chores or other womanly things like sew and raise children. They were never expected to speak up when a man made a decision that they did not agree with. They were supposed to take the back seat to their husbands. Medea was different, she didn’t sit back and let her husband treat her as an object that could be left in the corner and forgotten. She took a stand helping Jason on his quest and took revenge on him when he betrayed …show more content…
She confronts him on this and uses her wittiness to see that he was not being honest with her. She claimed that if there wasn’t a problem he shouldn’t have to hide anything from her. She was showing that they should have both been part of the plan if it was only to gain a higher status for the family. When Medea is being left by her husband she laments and even contemplates suicide because of how broken her heart was. During her period of depression her nurse claims that she had a feeling that Medea was planning something vicious.(Puchner 746) After she gets past the emotional shock she goes on to get revenge on Jason for what he has done. She shows that women don’t have to sit back and be hurt but they should take the strength of the emotion that they feel and use it to fight back.
During Medea’s revenge it is apparent that Euripides is showing supremacy to women through the little things that normally people would think as feminine and harmless by showing them as weapons. The objects are a simile for women by the way that on the outside they might seem just beautiful and dainty and harmless but on the inside they can be just as strong and destructive as men