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Women's role in greek literature
Essay on women in greek mythogy
Women's role in greek literature
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A narrative’s climax often tells as much about its author and their societal context as it does about the characters or individuals depicted therein. This could be said of many narratives, including both the Athenian tragedian Euripides’ Medea as well as Roman historian Livy’s Tarquin the Proud and the Rape of Lucretia, the exceedingly divergent climaxes of which reflect not only the divergent goals of their authors in writing them, but also the differing societal contexts which shaped those goals and depictions. In these two narratives, each author depicts widely differing women forced into resolving their own internal and external conflicts which, however different, are both born out of the nature of their social visibility (or lack thereof) …show more content…
and lack of social protections in that context. In Medea, Euripides presents us with an Athenian society in which women’s virtues are largely ignored in favor of their forced invisibility.
In the presented passage from Medea, the titular character faces exile from Corinth over its ruler Creon’s fear of her anger towards her husband and her abilities as a sorceress. Having betrayed her home and country in her adventures with her philandering husband Jason, however, she is without a place to go. In a public accusal of her husband, Medea summarizes the nature of her, and many women’s, plight in their society clearly and succinctly, saying that, “Of all creatures that feel and think, we women are the unhappiest species” (Euripides 41). She goes on to state the chief causes of this unhappiness to the people of Corinth, depicting a life of domestic imprisonment for women as well as the dangers and lack of fulfillment inherent therein. She first notes the financial and bodily tributes paid to husbands by their wives, reminding the people of Corinth that, “we must pay a great dowry to a husband who will be a tyrant of our bodies” (Euripides 41) and, in doing so, highlights the self-sacrifice inherent to a woman’s marriage. She notes further that …show more content…
should a woman enter into an unfavorable marriage with a bad man, as she has, then she cannot leave it, as “separations bring disgrace on the woman and it is not possible to renounce one’s husband” (Euripides 41). The possibility of an inescapable, unfavorable marriage all too present a threat for women in her society, Medea believes that, should such a union be entered into, that, “one is better dead” (Euripides 41), as “women have only one person to turn to” (Euripides 41)–their husband–should the union sour. For women in the Athenian society the play was written to critique, to be married was to be inherently confined and in a role of self-sacrifice, invisible to all of society but their immediate family. Should these familial ties sever, as Medea’s have, then a woman is left with nothing. Medea’s life of social isolation and confinement stands in direct contrast with the inclusion and openness afforded Lucretia in Tarquin the Proud and the Rape of Lucretia. While Medea, in spite of all she has done for Jason, remains socially constrained to a life of isolation and invisibility, Livy writes of a Roman society which, even in its beginnings, upheld the womanly virtues of its wives. We see this in how Collatinus, Lucretia’s husband, brags of her virtue to his peers, boasting of her “incomparable superiority” (Livy 57). Together, the men collectively decide to ride to Rome to observe and compare their wives in the women’s natural environments. The wives of the Etruscan princes are found at a luxurious dinner-party with their young friends. Lucretia, however, won the “contest in womanly virtue” (Livy 57) outright when the men happened upon her spinning by lamplight, surrounded by servants, rising only to bid her husband and newfound guests welcome. Unlike Medea, who had “only one person to turn to” (Euripides 41), Lucretia is included within her society’s social circles and, like the wives of the Etruscan princes, is able to more freely interact with men from outside the home. This openness, ultimately, proves to be a danger to her, as one of her husband’s peers, Sextus Tarquinus, the son of the Etruscan king, takes advantage of her hospitality to sexually assault her. Though different from Medea in the level of visibility she enjoys in her society, Lucretia is like Medea in that both lack the social protections at their respective levels of social visibility, driving each of them to the bloody, desperate, and exceedingly different climaxes which ultimately define their narratives. In choosing Medea as his play’s protagonist, Euripides chose a woman isolated in the extreme to illustrate not only the inherent dissatisfaction felt by women in such a circumstance of invisibility and social isolation, but also to demonstrate the lack of social protections afforded these individuals. A foreign wife in a strange land wronged by the very man who might afford her the lion’s share of her social protection, Medea is also without family with whom she might “find refuge from the storms of misfortune” (Euripides 41). Misfortune finds her quickly in the absence of a family’s social protection, as she is exiled from Corinth for the threat its king Creon feels she poses in her anger towards her husband Jason and his daughter Glauce, for whom Jason seeks to cast Medea aside. Though beloved by her husband, like Medea Lucretia lacks, in her highly visible role in early Roman society, a level of social protection which might have prevented her assault at the hands of Sextus Tarquinus, as her rape serves a role greater than that within the narrative.
As Livy wrote this narrative as an origin story for the Roman republic hundreds of years later, Lucretia’s rape acts not only within the context of the narrative as a call to action for the oppressed Romans, but also a warning against absolute monarchical power. In Livy’s narrative, the act of subjecting oneself to a monarch is akin to submitting to one’s own sexual assault. Though unprotected in a manner different from Medea, the danger posed to Lucretia and other Roman women by monarchical power leaves them in a similar lack of social protection which ultimately leads to the climaxes of their
narratives. In Medea, Euripides presents his audience with an act of climactic vengeance born out the titular character’s desperation at a life of stripped of its social protections and constrained by a role of forced social invisibility, while in Tarquin the Proud and the Rape of Lucretia Livy depicts a desperation-fueled climax born out of the lack of social protections available for its main female character, Lucretia, in the position of visibility afforded her in own society. The climax of Medea is undoubtedly the multiple murders she commits, which include Glauce, her husband’s chosen new bride; Glauce’s father Creon, king of Corinth; and her own children. Lucretia, on the other hand, turns inward and kills herself so as to preserve her integrity and motivate the men around her to avenge her assault and death at the hands of the Etruscan monarchy. However different the acts which mark the climax of each narrative, each is born out the dangers posed to each of its female protagonists by the lack of social protection in their differing degrees of visibility. In both Medea and Tarquin the Proud and the Rape of Lucretia, we see female protagonists left without social protections in their differing levels of social visibility. While the violent result is different for each woman, with Medea turning violent against others and Lucretia turning a blade against herself, the unprotectedness of women lies at the heart of each climactic act, and, being at the center of two of Western civilization’s most important historical texts, at the heart of Western society.
In ancient Greece, women lacked many of the fundamental rights held by men. Medea feels that this is unjust. These feelings are shown on page 195 when Medea states “...we must pay a great dowry to a husband who will be the tyrant of our bodies; and there is another fearful hazard: whether we shall get a good man or a bad. For separations bring disgrace on the woman and it is not possible to renounce one’s husband…” After being rejected by the one she loved, she beings to question the morals of those around her. She assumes that Greek women are weak and naive for allowing men to treat them this way; allowing men to cast them away at their heart’s content.
In Euripides Medea, Medea is the morally ambiguous character. In part, Medea can be seen as good because she wanted to live with Jason and her two children in Corinth as a family and enjoy a happy life. So it is understandable that Medea becomes devastated and an emotional wreck after Jason leaves her for the princess. He claimed by marrying the princess, he could bring the children up in a well-being and make more royal children. Medea became a distressed. Hateful, and a bitter woman at Jason. Medea mentioned, “we women are the most unfortunate creatures.” Medea acknowledges that the women don’t have much choice in the marriage and if they want a good life, they need a man to control them. And that woman would be much better off if they had
In Medea, the society is similar when it comes to men versus women. Barlow states that the “[h]usband have complete physical control of their wives,” which is similar to the society in Bacchae (Barlow 159). Medea is mistreated by almost all the men that she encounters within the play. Jason betrays her and leaves her to marry Creon’s daughter. Creon wants to banish Medea and her two sons from his land (Medea 272-273). When Creon is banishing Medea from his land he has no h...
The time is the sixth century, the place is Rome and the person is Lucretia, a woman who contributed to one of the biggest parts of Roman history: the creation of the Roman republic. The rape of the virtuous Lucretia by Sextus Tarquinius, the son of Tarquinius Superbus' (an Etruscan king) was the final straw for the Roman people and pushed them to want to change from a monarchy to a republic. From the accounts of the rape of Lucretia from ancient historians like Livy, Cicero and Dionysius, it is clear that Lucretias rape not only spurred the roman people to want to get rid of the Etruscan King and his family, but also revealed the important role of virtue in women in roman society.
Due to traditional stereotypes of women, literature around the world is heavily male-dominant, with few female characters outside of cliché tropes. Whenever a female character is introduced, however, the assumption is that she will be a strong lead that challenges the patriarchal values. The authors of The Thousand and One Nights and Medea use their female centered stories to prove their contrasting beliefs on the role of women not only in literature, but also in society. A story with a female main character can be seen as empowering, but this is not always the case, as seen when comparing and contrasting Medea and The Thousand and One Nights.
Medea and Lysistrata are two Greek literatures that depict the power which women are driven to achieve in an aim to defy gender inequality. In The Medea, Medea is battling against her husband Jason whom she hates. On the other hand, in Aristophanes' Lysistrata, the protagonist Lysistrata plotted to convince and organize the female gender to protest against the stubbornness of men. In terms of defining the purpose of these two literatures, it is apparent that Euripedes and Aristophanes created characters that demonstrate resistance against the domination of men in the society.
Livy’s narration of the rape is different from Ovid’s as it clearly describes the effort put forth by Romulus to appease the women that were taken. Livy is able to develop the significance of the women taken by showing how his treatment of the gender roles is a direct reflection of what is acceptable in Rome, and that his narrative is not simply marital based but also has themes in the political and social realms. In the world today western culture recognizes persecution and oppression. Yet, the allegorical characterization of victims is not identified or taken as seriously. The Sabine woman are not viewed as victims for sexual innuendos in Livy’s tale. Instead they take the role of a counterfeit desire that seems ...
Most people would define a great female protagonist as intelligent, strong minded and willing to fight for what she believes in. Both Bernarda Alba from Federico Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba and Medea by Euripides fit this description. One is a tyrannical mother who imposes her choices on her five daughters, the other is arguably the strongest non-Olympian woman in all of Greek mythology. If we take a closer look, we notice that these two characters have many things in common. From their positions of strength, to the masculine aspects of their personalities; from the way they deal with situations to the part they play in the deaths of their children. In this essay we will attempt to seek out their similarities, as well as discover how two playwrights, who wrote for distinct audiences millennia apart, could have created two women so alike.
The tragic play Medea is a struggle between reason and violence. Medea is deliberately portrayed as not a ‘normal woman’, but excessive in her passions. Medea is a torment to herself and to others; that is why Euripides shows her blazing her way through life leaving wreckage behind her. Euripides has presented Medea as a figure previously thought of exclusively as a male- hero. Her balance of character is a combination of the outstanding qualities of Achilles and Odysseus.
In the classical age, women were expected to be meek and powerless creatures, and when they were not they were usually considered to be hysterical. Medea’s strength is portrayed as her madness as she takes control and decides the fate of her enemies. Medea breaks that rule in the manifestation of the madness that poisons her mind. Medea has left everything to be with Jason, she has even gone as far as forsaking her father and murdering her brother in order to leave with Jason, “Oh, my father! Oh my country! In what dishonor / I left you, killing my own brother for it” (164-65). This perhaps should have been a red flag for Jason in realizing how she killed her own flesh and blood and should have been an indicator for the evil that resided within her. Medea is in Jason’s turf and here she is considered a foreigner, she now defines herself via her marriage to Jason. Ultimately, when she loses him to a younger bride, she also loses her ability to be rational in her thinking. Euripides allows Medea to have a voice, and thus, gives insight into how what is happening affects her psyche.
The play was considered comic by the ancient Athenians because of its rhyming lyricism, its song and dance, its bawdy puns, but most of all because the notion and methods of female empowerment conceived in the play were perfectly ridiculous. Yet, as is the case in a number of Aristophanes’ plays, he has presented an intricate vision of genuine human crisis. In true, comic form Aristophanes superficially resolves the play’s conflicts celebrating the absurdity of dramatic communication. It is these loose threads that are most rife with tragedy for modern reader. By exploring an ancient perspective on female domesticity, male political and military power, rape, and efforts to maintain the integrity of the female body, we can liberate our modern dialogue.
Women’s lives are represented by the roles they either choose or have imposed on them. This is evident in the play Medea by Euripides through the characters of Medea and the nurse. During the time period which Medea is set women have very limited social power and no political power at all, although a women’s maternal and domestic power was respected in the privacy of the home, “Our lives depend on how his lordship feels”. The limited power these women were given is different to modern society yet roles are still imposed on women to conform and be a dutiful wife.
In Medea, by Euripides, conflicts play a major role in the creation of the play. Some examples of these conflicts are with Medea and Jason, Medea and herself, and Medea and Creon. Medea is shown to be a strong, independent woman who does what she wants as well as doesn’t let anything stand in her way. She shares qualities of a traditional male at the time, and the qualities of a traditional female. Euripides makes this clear in the play by creating conflicts to prove women can be a powerful character and that the play in general challenges the idea of misogyny.
Ironically, Medea’s actions are similar to a man when she takes charge of her marriage, living situation, and family life when she devices a plan to engulf her husband with grief. With this in mind, Medea had accepts her place in a man’s world unti...
This mutual suffering between Medea and the Chorus raises issues such as the treatment of women at the time when this play was written. When Medea married Jason, she married herself to him for life. She was expected to be totally obedient and to accept whatever her husband willed. For her to look upon another man other than her husband would have been totally unacceptable. Whereas Jason marries another woman while he...