Gender Roles In Medea

The chorus speaks of everything being reversed, as for the first time, a woman as a thinker is taking all the decisions and controls the whip. There is going to be a change in the narrative from being purely masculine since a woman’s voice backed by reason and emotions is going to resonate through the rest of the play. It is to be wondered whether such an optimistic endeavour or expectation seeks a rewriting of history from the viewpoint of women. It might even seek an equal representation of female claiming their existence to be valid. For the current context, it might mean two things, either a reversal of roles, which might ultimately be subsuming oneself into the heteronormative structure or an overturning of power structures, which is more of destroying the existing links. Overtly, it seems to be a rebellious idea, to free the female identity caged under a masculine ethos.

Jason’s outbursts with Medea posit some contradictory

It will be interesting to analyse whether her portrayal is masculinist, subsuming the self into the masculine ethos or outrightly dismantling the rigid ethos. Gender as a construct is posited as related to universalistic and particularistic principles, with clear demarcations of access for women. As a domestic figure, women could lay claim to the particularistic principles and the ethic of care, and not foray into the public domain. Gender roles are set up as rigid, which can’t be transgressed by either of the genders. Power and authority are vested in the universalistic domain while meekness and subordination are set in the particularistic domain. What Euripides’ play perhaps attempts to do is to free up those gender roles and make them fluid. Medea is in a dilemma, as a woman acting in accordance with one set of principles, but being in conflict with opposing forces at another