Medea Literary Analysis: Medea's Feminist Movement

Medea’s Feminist Movement In Euripides Medea, Medea is a woman that feels she has been betrayed, after her husband Jason left her. She mourns and weeps at the beginning, then starts staging her revenge against Jason at any cost. In the story, it seems she blames the way women are unequally treated to be the cause of her demise and revenge. Medea personality is seen as someone that is against the patriarchal community she lives in. Her actions and thought process show she is unique from the normal woman of her time and she even changes other characters like the Chorus thinking of what a woman should be. In Gulshan Taneja Overview of “Medea”, “Euripides ' interest in Medea 's status as woman in an essentially patriarchal society and her status as an alien in Greek society have led to Medea being read as a proto-feminist as well as postcolonial text” (Taneja, “Medea”). Euripides Medea is seen as a feminist text as Medea and the Chorus are women who are tired of the unequal treatment received in the society they live in because they mention numerous times in the text how women are treated and how they are against it. Medea despised the way women were treated and the way women accepted it. Medea said, “Of all the living creatures with a soul and mind, we women are the most pathetic”

Medea said it is believed that “They [women] lead safe, untroubled lives at home while they [men] do battle with the spear. They’re wrong. I’d rather take my stand behind a shield three times than go through childbirth once” (Euripides 535). In this quote, Medea rejects what is believed the main traditional role of women and says she would rather go into battle than give birth. Medea attacks the role of women in the patriarchal community she is in. The comparison to childbirth means she is trying to show that women go through more pain than men and such traditional roles should not be forced on