The Role Of Misogyny In Euripides's Medea

For as long as humans have roamed the Earth, misogyny has been an everyday part of life. Some countries have handled it better than others, but misogyny faces every community. In Euripides tragedy Medea, the main character Medea struggles with the misogynistic views constantly facing the society in which she resides. Euripides uses Medea to convey misogyny. In a verbal rant in response to the Chorus, Medea says, “we have to buy a husband… just to get a master for our body." In this time period the custom is that the family of the bride has to pay the groom a significant amount of money to marry their daughter. The choice of who the bride marries falls in the hands of the potential husband and her father instead of being able to choose a man

To refuse him is just not possible." Ancient Greece citizens view women as precious and perfect virgins, patiently waiting for the day they can finally be married and be a gift of purity for their husbands. Like in Medea, many men take on multiple wives, expecting each one to be a virgin, while they themselves are not virgins and often have sex out of wedlock. The pressure lies unfairly on the woman to remain pure instead of being placed equally on the men as well. In this society, the man can also separate himself from a marriage if he is not happy with his wife’s performance, but a woman is forbidden from fleeing. Medea continues on to say that, “A man, when he gets fed up with the people at home, can go elsewhere to ease his heart." He is accepted by his friends and family if he returns home, whereas the woman is shunned by her family and community. Unfortunately, women are treated similarly in today’s culture when it comes to how they are perceived when having premarital sex. A woman is easily called a slut if she has sex with her boyfriend or with different men over time, but a man is often praised for the same behavior. The woman is shamed while the man is celebrated for his accomplishments. The degree of misogyny when it comes to divorce and separations has thankfully changed over the last few generations. With divorces more common, women are now able to choose to leave a marriage when unhappy in the same way men can make that choice. The power no longer remains solely in the hand of the man, but lies within either