Mede The Feminist Role Of Women In Medea

Feminism has been around for hundreds of years. Though, it can really be traced back as much as thousands of years. All the way back to Euripides play, Medea. In the play, Medea recognizes the issues of how women are treated differently than men. Not only that, but also how the standards for women versus men differ. Considering the behavior of not only Medea, but of all the women in Euripides play, Medea can be viewed as the first feminist work that paved the way for feminist views that are still being considered today. In Euripides play, Medea realizes fairly quickly just where her place as a woman is in the society. She says, “We women are the most beset by trials of any species that has breath and power of thought” (Euripides and

She is shown, being able to set aside her “womanly emotions” and do what she felt she needed to do. Medea stands out in Euripides play because she does not just absentmindedly accept her fate that has been dealt to her by her cheating husband, as expected. She deserts the expectations that have been placed on her by the society and under her own definition, although tragic, rises above. Women are generally seen as the ones who bring life into the world, and men are commonly seen as the ones that take life away. Traditionally, men are the ones who do the killing, in war or otherwise. Therefore, when Medea decides that the way to solve her problem and have justice for the wrongdoings that have been done to her, is to kill not only Jason’s new bride and her father but her own two children, she flees from her stereotypical gender association that women are only capable of bringing life into the world. She states this when she says, “Now they are bound to die in any case, and since they must, it will be me, the one who gave them birth, who’ll be the one to deal them death” (Euripides and Taplin 49). Medea recognizes that because she poisoned Jason’s new bride and her father, the King, that her children will be killed by someone. However, she decides that it should be the person who gave them life that should take it away. Medea again, flees the common thought of women’s roles when she says, “I would rather join the battle rank of shields three times than undergo birth-labor once” (Euripides and Taplin 15). Here Medea is shown shunning the conventional roles of women, what their very basic purpose was thought to