Although some would argue that the portrayal of women as deceitful in both Medea and the Hebrew Bible is to demonstrate women’s lack of societal worth however, I will argue that the portal of women as the root of deception highlight the true moral fibers of the male characters in the stories.
The first example of women being seen as the root of all deception is Eve from Genesis. “The woman saw that the tree was good for eating… and she took of its fruits and ate.” (p.160) the first quotes shows that even after being told again and again by God, Eve was just easily persuaded, making her character seem weak and spineless. The text goes on to state, “She also gave to her man, and he ate.”(p.160) this critical quote proves it’s not the man’s
…show more content…
The nurse gives one example of Medea’s cons “She would have never persuaded Pelias’ daughters to kill their own father.” Alluding to the power of Medea’s convictions. She is further characterized by the Nurse stating “She’s a terror. There is no way to be her enemy and come out the victor.” Medea’s story still promotes the ideal that women are the root for deception. Medea’s motives and actions are very different from the women in the Hebrew Bible, making the contrast between the two clear. Never the less through Medea’s characterization of a deviant and vindictive women, we are able to see that her characterization was simply to make the men in her story seem all the more sane and …show more content…
Through Medea’s trickier Aegeus’s caring and empathetic side is revealed. “Your eyes are melting. What’s the matter?”(p.804) demonstrates Aegeus cares about Medea’s feelings despite her defiant nature. He goes on to say things like “why the low spirts? Tell me,” to “No He wouldn’t dare. It’s much to shameful.” (p.804) all of these quotes demonstrate unlike the stereotypical man during this period Aegeus actually cares about Medea. He is willing to speak with her on a level of equality versus a superiority level. Some would counter by saying that Aegeus acts foolish and is not intelligent, and his characterization is used to demonstrate how manipulative Medea can be. I agree that through Aegeus we learn of Medea’s motives however, I do not believe that hinders the true spirit of Aegeus. Aegeus is honest and kind and Medea prays on that which only brings his true character out more. Medea’s portrayal as the root of deception allows stand out male characters like Aegeus to demonstrate not all men during this time period constantly wronged
Clytaemnestra and Medea are two women who are seeking justice for a wrong committed by their husbands. Clytaemnestra?s husband, Agamemnon, did not wrong here directly but rather indirectly. Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter Iphigeneia, in order to calm the Thracian winds. For Clytaemnestra this brought much hatred towards Agamemnon. Here Agamemnon had betrayed Clytaemnestra and their daughters trust, and for that she sought revenge. Medea's husband, Jason, had dishonored her with his unfaithfulness. Medea sought to kill everything that was important in Jason's life in order to seek justice. Clytaemnestra and Medea are similar but yet different in the ways that they define justice, setup up their victims, carry out the just sentence and in the end justify their actions.
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
Medea first enters the play and greets the women of the chorus. The chorus has just witnessed her wild lamentations, where she prayed for death and threatened to avenge herself on Jason and his new wife. Medea proceeds to tell the chorus about Jason’s betrayal and her own humiliation. She explains how heartbroken she is and the difficulties of being exiled in a city were she knows no one. She has no family or friends in Corinth and has been completely dependent on Jason. She laments the gloomy despair into which she has fallen. During this exchange she reveals to the chorus that she intends to devise a plan to break up the marriage and seek revenge against Jason. She explains that while most women would not stand up to for themselves, she will not remain defenseless: “but, when once she is wronged in the matter of love, No other soul can hold so many thoughts of blood.” In this scene Medea is not speaking calmly or reasonably. She is undoubtable distraught, and her thoughts and actions are being controlled by her hatred. The ...
Through the readings of the Odyssey and “Medea,” I have recognized parallel patterns in both the marriages between Penelope and Odysseus and Medea and Jason. Odysseus left Penelope with a newborn child while he went off to war. During this time, many eligible suitors, ready to prove their standing and take Odysseus’ place as husband, congregated in the palace constantly. Medea was abandoned and left for another women of higher standing. The way Medea and Penelope carry out deception and trickery differ. Medea and Penelope, both wives whose husbands left them, turned into women consumed with deception, trickery, and cleverness, while differing in their way of implementing their desires, one through murder and the other through mind games.
The Odyssey of Homer and “Medea” are two of the better-known Greek literary works that emphasize the role of women in society. Odysseus returned home from his long journey to find Penelope’s loyalty unwavering to her husband, despite going through several hardships to keep this sense of loyalty. For example, while Odysseus was on his journey, she agrees to remarry on condition, which appears as though she is betraying her husband. On the other hand, Medea, the wife of Jason, took an opposite approach in response to gender role expectations. Once she discovered that Jason found a new wife and abandoned her, she tried to do something in order to ruin his name and reputation. We see from here that while Penelope conforms to the expectations of
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 is a character existing outside of the typical Greek value and social systems that existed in the Greek Polis’s at the time of the play’s inception. She is strong willed, powerful, intelligent, cunning, volatile and independent. She possesses many traits and characteristics reserved and associated with Greek heroes in other plays common at the time.
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.
Medea’s illegitimate marriage and the betrayal of Jason drive Medea to extreme revenge. Medea chooses to act with her immortal self and commit inhumane acts of murder rather than rationalize the outcomes of her actions. Medea see’s this option as her only resort as she has been banished and has nowhere to go, “stripped of her place”. To create sympathy for Medea, Euripides plays down Medea’s supernatural powers until the end of the play. Throughout the play Medea represents all characteristics found in individual women put together, including; love, passion, betrayal and revenge. Medea’s portrayal of human flaws creates empathetic emotions from the audience. The audience commiserates with Medea’s human flaws as they recognize them in themselves. Medea plays the major role in this play as she demonstrates many behavioral and psychological patterns unlike any of the other Greek women in the play; this draws the audience’s attention to Medea for sympathy and respect.
The representation of women in Athenian tragedy was performed exclusively for men, thus Euripides' portrayal of Medea displaying traits common to a Grecian hero was somewhat radical. Throughout the play, Euripides continually establishes Medea as one who depicts the duality of having both stereotypically feminine and masculine qualities within her character. He paints her as one who embodies both the typically male personality of a cunning, deceptive and manipulative being, but also one that experiences emotion vividly, and lacks sound reason or conscience. The dichotomous delineation of both her feminine and masculine sides are shown in her lack of composure and obedience, and the way in which she demands revenge for the wrongs others have done to her, respectively. Euripides uses the role of the Chorus and Nurse to assist the audience in understanding Medea’s actions, and thus reconciles Medea’s doings to those of a slighted woman and tragic hero.
Women were often subjects of intense focus in ancient literary works. In Sarah Pomeroy’s introduction of her text Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves, she writes, “Women pervade nearly every genre of classical literature, yet often the bias of the author distorts the information” (x). It is evident in literature that the social roles of women were more restricted than the roles of men. And since the majority of early literature was written by men, misogyny tends to taint much of it. The female characters are usually given negative traits of deception, temptation, selfishness, and seduction. Women were controlled, contained, and exploited. In early literature, women are seen as objects of possession, forces deadly to men, cunning, passive, shameful, and often less honorable than men. Literature reflects the societal beliefs and attitudes of an era and the consistency of these beliefs and attitudes toward women and the roles women play has endured through the centuries in literature. Women begin at a disadvantage according to these societal definitions. In a world run by competing men, women were viewed as property—prizes of contests, booty of battle and the more power men had over these possessions the more prestigious the man. When reading ancient literature one finds that women are often not only prizes, but they were responsible for luring or seducing men into damnation by using their feminine traits.
... takes matters into her own hands and doesn’t wait for a man to handle things for her. Also, her internal conflict that is visible throughout the entire play signify that she actually thinks for herself, and is strong enough to need to make serious decisions on her own, regardless of her gender. All of this goes back on the traditional Greek society, and helps make Medea into a play that is ahead of its time. With Euripides challenging the notion of misogyny, he creates Medea to show how powerful and dangerous a woman can be in a story, even though it was never heard of in the modern eras.
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...
Despite the similarity there is a evident difference and this can be to ‘Accentuat[ed] the dangers of Greeks having unpredictable foreign [wives]’ as found by Mackay. Nugent supports this as she too suggest that the play ‘may have had resonance with males in the audience who had foreign concubines’ to warn them of their cunningness. As presented when Medea says ‘greet your father…and love him as you mother does’ she says while plotting revenge on him [895]. Medea throughout the play wasn’t trusted by men, ‘ you are a clever woman and skilled in may evil arts’ [285], and this could be because of her barbarian heritage. However, Know debates this as he states that it wasn’t her barbarian heritage that was distrusted, but rather ‘Men distrust superior intelligence in general but they really fear and hate it in a woman’. Seghir finds that Euripides use of a female was a very feministic thing because, the fact that he made a woman his protagonist is a big
In Euripides' play Medea, the maddened main character, Medea, reveals how betrayal can significantly change a person. Medea's actions, appearance, statements, and what others have to say about her display these alterations. Medea displays a lot of different emotions throughout the play. She becomes full of hatred and hostility after being refused by her husband. Not only did this change her, but Medea took a turn for the worse after being banished.