Although Euripides is known for his propensity to defy tradition and complacency, his Medea was quite controversial when it was introduced in 431 BC into classical Greece ( around 479-323 BC). Athenian society, a man's world by organization, had no place for women outside the home. When a girl was young, she was ruled by her father, and after he chose who she would marry, her new master was her husband, and she "received much male advice about staying in the house." house and to keep quiet” (Bowra 85). ). Women basically shared an equal status with slaves in Athenian society, having no privileges and certainly no power other than that held within the household over servants. The culture expected women to demonstrate great virtue and submit fully to their husbands. Medea is not only a woman, but she is also a foreigner, which places her in an even lower status. Nevertheless, she exercises power over her husband as well as any other character, female or male, and she does so using extreme violence. Written in what could certainly be called a male-dominated society and times, Euripides' Medea is a feminist play and that of Euripides himself, traditionally considered a misogynist, is quite the opposite. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Athenian society was certainly a man's world in which women were expected to run the household and stay out of sight. Very often, many marriages were arranged for religious, political or economic purposes, and rarely for love. Often the husband and wife have never met before marriage. Once the marriage was final, the woman was mainly limited to the marital practices of managing the servants, weaving on a loom and raising the children. Medea's negative feelings on this subject are revealed when she exclaims: "A man, when he is tired of the company in his house, goes out of the house and puts an end to his boredom... What we said about us is that we have a peaceful life at home, while they fight in the war. How wrong they are! I would much rather stand at the front three times than have a child” (Euripides 441. 246-49). This is not only Euripides' voice mocking male selfishness and society's high view of war, but also a hint of Medea's dissatisfaction with the limitations of her gender. Men, on the other hand, including married men, enjoyed complete freedom, including complete sexual freedom. freedom (Flacelière 66). Men in Athenian society were known for their extreme arrogance, as shown by a statement by Thomas Rosenmeyer: "It is said of Socrates - or Plato - that when he rose each morning, he gave thanks, he was born Greek and not Greek . barbaric foreigner, free man and not slave, man and not woman. » (Rosenmeyer 123) This is exactly the attitude of superiority that Euripides embodies in Jason, Medea's Greek husband. We see this same smug attitude when Jason tries to convince Medea that he did more for her than she did for him by getting her out of her barbarian homeland and into Greece. Jason represents the typical Greek man and, in general, he is more likely to play the role of the hero. However, Medea is not a typical work and Euripides challenged conventions. We are told that Euripides “loved Athens but hated its arrogant exclusivity, hated its imperialist ambitions, hated war.” (Rosenmeyer 152) For this reason, Euripides began toattack vanity in Athenian society. Feminism can be difficult to define. A view specific to this particular work is that “women have the same abilities, good or bad, as men” (Durant 362). In Medea's case, feminism is linked to power. Who exercised power in Athenian society? Certainly, men have done it. Who exercises power in Medea? When betrayed, she doesn't lay down and give up, she fights the only way she knows how. If Medea's response had been a timid protest, no one would have listened to her. The modernist writer Flannery O'Connor, as part of his theory of distortion, once said that "to the almost blind you draw great surprising figures" (quoted in Lauter); This is exactly what Medea does. Because of his inferior position, his retaliation must be extreme. After losing her family and her homeland, her husband and now her new home, Medea has nothing left but to seek revenge. Her pride has been hurt and she vows to never be humiliated by Jason again. Feminism in Euripides' Medea has nothing to do with the equal social status of women, but rather with the power acquired after long repression. This power is not accessible to all women, only to Medea, who must obtain it through extreme acts. Medea gains control of power through the use of her many faculties. Medea is intelligent, charming, deeply in love with Jason, and, most dangerous of all, she is oppressed. Because she is intelligent, she is feared, as shown in the words of King Creon: "I am afraid of you... You are an intelligent woman, versed in the evil arts, and you are angry at having lost the love of your husband” (Euripides 441. 280-84). Medea uses her feminine charm to gain permission from King Aigeus to settle down after his escape, and again to convince Jason that she is no longer angry but understands his decision to remarry and wants peace . Medea's fault is her excessive love for Jason. The muses, from the first lines of the play, declare that her heart is “on fire with passionate love for Jason” (Euripides 435, 8). Because of this love, she commits many terribly violent acts, including the murder of her two sons. In Euripides' introduction on page 434, he speaks of a theme from Medea: "Euripides' theme, like Homer's, is violence, but it is the unspeakable violence of the oppressed, which is greater than the violence of the oppressor and which, because it has been repressed for a long time, cannot be controlled” (Mack). Medea, as a woman in Athenian society, is oppressed by tradition and current opinion. Medea becomes the tragic hero through the combined effects of her intelligence, charm, uncontrollable love, and reluctance to simply accept her fate as a woman. The traditional view of Euripides as a misogynist stems from the fact that some of Euripides' characters, such as Medea, are vile murderers who often arouse hatred. Medea herself is ready to emphasize the wickedness of which her sex is capable: “And women, although the most powerless to perform good deeds, are of all evils the most skillful creators” (Euripides 444. 405-06) . Additionally, there is a flimsy tradition that Euripides had an unhappy married life (Bates 119). If critics thought he hated women, it was probably due to their own incomplete view of his female characters, for although he created vengeful and violent characters like Medea and Phaedra, other of his plays included gentle and upright women, as like Macaria and Iphigenia (Bates 119). Furthermore, the fact that Euripides knows the defects of the female sex and exposes them in a completely realistic manner is not inno cases revealing any contempt towards women. In fact, many agree that, of all the playwrights of antiquity, it was he who best presented the cause of women and supported "the emerging movement for their emancipation" (Durant 416). The ancient view of Euripides as a woman-hater is based on short-sighted thinking and has a weak foundation. Moreover, Euripides arouses much more sympathy for Medea than for the unfaithful Jason. The muses proclaim: “And poor Media is scorned and cries aloud over the vows they made to each other, with right hands joined in eternal promise. She calls on the gods to witness the kind of return Jason made to his love. remains without food and gives himself over to suffering, wasting every moment of the day in tears” (Euripides 436, 20-23). In addition to this description of her grief, the reader is already aware of the many sacrifices Medea made for Jason, and the many bridges she burned to be with him. Jason, on the other hand, is a truly unlikeable character. He is weak, selfish, and rather childish in his explanations and treatment of Medea. The reader cannot help but hate Jason for this mistreatment, for his archetypal Greek masculinity, and for his character in general. Even when Medea's vengeful actions are extreme, we hardly feel sorry for Jason. Additionally, Euripides uses Medea to communicate his own voice regarding modernist writing styles. This occurs in Medea's speech to King Creon, in lines 290 to 303 of the drama in which she tells him about the difficulties of being intelligent. Euripides certainly would not have uttered a message of such personal importance through the mouth of a character he detested. Euripides recognized the drama and power of female emotions and he used them, reflecting his creative genius (Bates 119). Medea's first emotion, love, turns into jealousy and then hatred as the plot unfolds. Medea is not an ordinary woman of the time, she is superior, a little elevated. His rage rises from stanza to stanza. The nurse expresses her fear that something terrible will happen: “Great people have a terrible character, always in their own way, rarely controlled, dangerous, they move from one mood to another” (Euripides 438. 119 -21). Medea and her emotions are larger than life. Thus, the tragic hero is no longer a king, but a woman who, because she finds no reparation for her wrongs in society, is driven by her passion to violate the most sacred laws of this society. rebellion against its typical representative, Jason, her husband. She is not only a woman and a foreigner, she is also a person of great intellectual power. Compared to her, the gullible king and her complacent husband are children, and once her mind is made up, she places them as pawns in their place in her barbaric game” (Mack 434). In the end, although Medea's actions are vile, she is the winner. Furthermore, Medea's actions have no consequences. She simply escapes in a chariot with the divine help of her grandfather, Helios. This further disrupts conventions. This foreign woman who has no status performs truly heinous acts against Jason. the symbol of a Greek ideal, and she simply flies away intact, with the help of a god no less. One might wonder what this means, especially if the questioner is a fifth-century Athenian warrior who has just enough time to realize himself. his sacrifices to the gods and visit his concubine to watch a quick performance of Medea at the theater. The reason for depicting the gods in this way is due to the., 1998.