Gender Roles in Medea

Charlotte Bronte once said, “Women are supposed to be very calm generally, but women feel just as men feel. They need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do. They suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow minded in their more privileged fellow creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags” (Bronte). In the play Medea, Euripides diverged from the traditional role of Greek women through Medea’s characteristics and response to her plight. In delineating the role of women, Medea was unlike any other Greek character. Medea was portrayed as capable and resilient woman who would refuse to back down no matter the obstacles. Nevertheless, women in the Greek culture had very few rights. Housework and bearing children were their main obligations. They were basically no better than slaves. In the ancient Greek society, Medea would not fit well among fellow Greek women. Her role as a woman in the play was downtrodden. However, her determination and courage caused people to fear her. She was a woman who turned her back on her family and killed her own brother in order to help her husband.
Medea had a mind of her own. Since she came from an exotic land, she did not have the same rights as the other citizen in Corinth. As a foreigner, she had trouble adapting and accepting the role of a Corinthian woman. “Then my mistress Medea would never have sailed to the towers of the land of Iolkos, her heart unhinged in her love for Jason, and would not now be living with her husband and children in this land of Corinth, gladdening the citi...

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... the role of women in Corinth was by delineating the opposition of it through the character Medea.
As the audience finished the play from the beginning to end, they could see the importance of the role of women. Unlike the protagonist, they were suppressed and didn’t have any authority. Medea’s characteristics were in opposition to the Corinthian women. Medea was the ultimate uncommon woman portrayed in the Greek theater. She was not an ordinary house wife because she killed her children and caused many other dreadful events. In the end, Euripide was showing a side of a woman that was different from the stereotypical role that women during the time was suppose to play.

Work Cited
Euripides. Medea. New York: Oxford University Press Inc, 1998. Print.
Bronte, Charlotte. “Quotes About Jane Eyre.” Goodreads.com. 2014 Goodreads Inc. 3. Web. 28 February 2014.