Medea Feminist Essay

In Euripides’ Medea, the heroine, Medea, is presented as aggressive and strong-willed, caught in a balancing act of passion and reason. Uncontrolled in her rage, and defiant against the stereotypical function of a woman in Greek society, Medea is led to murderous revenge. On these grounds, it could be claimed that Euripides is asserting a feminist critique, or, conversely, that he aims to make a spectacle of Medea’s character, instituting a cruel sarcasm as the basis of the tragedy. After thorough analysis, however, the answer to this question, whether Euripides was a feminist or not, becomes increasingly hazy, and furthermore, the question itself seems to miss the mark of the play’s essential sentiment. This essential sentiment, rather, is that tragic struggle is preserved not only between man and god, or man and fate, but between man and himself. As such, where Medea’s actions in the play can be taken as for or against a feminist viewpoint, more securely grounded is the notion of Medea’s interpersonal strife as a testament to Euripides’ humanization of the tragedy.

At the outset of the play, Euripides presents his heroine as full of rage, plotting her revenge against Jason, the divorce from whom leads Medea to

As such, this account portrays Medea as ridiculous, barbarous, and unequal in wisdom to men. In the midst of Medea’s decisive fury, almost in the same breath does Euripides deprecate the role of women in Greek society. In the opening scene, a nurse states, “There is not greater/ security than this in all the world:/ when a wife does not oppose her husband.” Medea herself claims, “Of all the living creatures with a soul/ and mind, we women are the most pathetic,” and later, “For any kind of noble deed, [women are] helpless.” The most incendiary remark comes by way of