Treatment of Women in Medea by Euripides - Essay Example

Treatment of Women in Medea by Euripides (431 BC) Euripides (484-406 BCE) lived most of his life in Athens during a politically turbulent period. It was during his infancy that Athens defeated Persia and gained dominance over the Mediterranean Region. However, by the time of his death, when he was nearing a venerable eighty years of age, Athens was gradually being upstaged by Sparta, its principal rival, in the Peloponnesian War. During Euripides’ lifetime, Athens witnessed an upsurge in political, economic and cultural activity—including drama. He himself took forward the tradition started by Aeschylus and Sophocles, although deviating from their style, to some extent. Euripides was recognized during his time (Aristotle referred to him as “the most tragic of poets”) but he was also lampooned for the kind of characters he created—characters who displayed several flaws in their make-up, and were far from ‘heroic’. Aristophanes, the contemporary writer of comedies, included several mocking references to Euripides’ plays, including Medea, in his works. (March p32) One of the reasons was that Euripides tended to go against the tide by taking up the cause of groups, which had no voice of their own (women and slaves, for instance). We must remember that Medea itself was a play written about a woman by a man for men. Euripides chose a subject/character—that of Medea—which was well known to the Athenian theatre going public. However, he took some liberties with the story—with the specific horrific detail of Medea murdering her young sons, which is the pivot on which the audience’s (lack of) sympathy for Medea rests. According to legend, Medea did not kill the children (March p35). But Euripides constructed his plot in this manner probably for intensifying the dramatic effect, but more likely to point out what a person who had no power to control her own life could do, if pushed to the corner. To understand the context of the play, and how its characters were understood by the audience, we need to be familiar with its background—what happened before the commencement of the play’s action. Tyro is unmarried and pregnant. She leaves her baby to die in the woods. This child—Pelias—was rescued by shepherds. Tyro marries Cretheus, son of Aeolus, and has three children. Later on, when Pelias returns, his mother accepts him back into the family. When Tyro’s husband dies, Pelias seizes the throne of Iolcos, although it legitimately belongs to his half-brother, Aeson. When Pelias tries to get the sanction of the oracle for his deed, he is warned of danger from a descendant of Aeolus “with one sandal”. Jason, grandson of Aeolus is sent away by Pelias. Jason grows to manhood and returns—he arrives, having swum across the river, losing a sandal in it. He then claims the throne which is rightfully his. Pelias decides to send Jason on a mission to avenge the death of Phrixus. So Jason sets out with his crew in his ship the Argo. They reach Colchis. Here he meets the king’s daughter, Medea, and they fall in love. Medea helps Jason with her magical powers, to outwit her father and obtain the Golden Fleece. Medea, while fleeing from Colchis with Jason, does not hesitate to kill her brother, Absyrtus, throwing his limbs one by one into the water, in order to slow down her father, who stops to pick them up. Thus they escape to Greece. But when they reach Iolcos, they find that Pelias has murdered Jason’s family. So she plays a trick on Pelias. She butchers an old ram, and boils it with some herbs, bringing forth a young lamb. So Pelias’ daughters attempting to make their father young, cut him up and boil him in the pot. This is a trick played by Medea on them to kill Pelias. The people of Iolcos, however, do not want Jason to become king. So Medea and he flee to Corinth. The action of Medea, the play, takes place here, many years later. (Classics Pages) From the background information, it is evident that Medea dabbles in magic—she is a sorceress; she is not above violent deeds and ready to perpetrate them on her kith and kin, she is a ‘foreigner’ in Corinth—as a matter of fact the Greeks considered the people of Colchis to be barbarians and therefore inferior to them; and she has no natal family—having burned her bridges before fleeing with Jason. When Medea, starts, Jason and Medea have been married several years and have two young sons. Jason has become selfish and ambitious and wishes to marry Glauce, the young and beautiful daughter of Creon, the king of Corinth. The added allure is that this will also ensure him the position of king in the future. It is taken for granted in the course of the play that the events of the past—mentioned earlier—are known to the audience. Several references to these are made by different characters as events work their way to the tragic denouement. Medea is shown as very human in resenting her husband’s relationship with Glauce. But she is depicted as incredibly proud, and although exiled by Creon refuses to take the ‘help’ offered by Jason. This help is of a condescending nature, and reprehensible, coming as it does from the very person who betrays her. .Medea comes across like a modern woman with ample self-esteem. But we must remember that she hardly has the options available to a woman of this century. So it must be her royal background that makes her so proud. The Chorus, though comprising of all women, does not necessarily express the woman’s viewpoint, though surprisingly it comes close to that, revealing how much sensitivity Euripides had to the woman’s point of view. The Chorus can here be considered to represent a combination of the woman’s view, the view of rationality, as well as that of the alter ego of Medea in the discussions on the correctness and wrong of making her innocent children the victim of her wrath. Medea is promised help by Aegeus. Once assured of this help, she decides to kill Creon, Glauce, and her children in order to wreak her vengeance on Jason. She then almost cold-bloodedly (only ‘almost’—because she does struggle with her natural maternal instincts before steeling herself against them) plans the steps carefully. She has already pretended weakness and begged Creon to give her one more day in Corinth, before she is exiled. She then pretends before Jason that she has accepted his decision, and begs him to allow her to send a present to Glauce, and also pleads with him to request Creon not to banish her children. Jason is taken in by this. Medea next sends her sons with the ‘present’ of a poisoned diadem and a fine gown to Glauce, who succumbs to the poison the moment she puts them on. Creon, hearing of his daughter’s fate, rushes to her side and embraces her in her death throes. The poison seeps into him, and he dies along with her. Jason runs to Medea to save his children, who in the meantime have come back home. Too late! Medea has killed them, and she does not leave the bodies to be buried by Jason. She is off in the chariot sent by Helios, her “Grandsire”—the Sun God—along with the bodies of her sons, whom she will bury; and then she will go to the kingdom of Aegeus to spend the rest of her cursed life. Medea is no happy woman. But since she has not been given the power to ‘do’, to be productive, by her husband and by the society she lives in, she will use her power in ‘undoing’. The following lines uttered by Medea are a powerful expression of the trauma experienced by her: “ Of all creatures that have breath and sensation, we women are the most unfortunate. First at an exorbitant price we must buy a husband and master of our bodies. [This misfortune is more painful than misfortune.] And the outcome of our lifes striving hangs on this, whether we take a bad or a good husband. For divorce is discreditable for women and it is not possible to refuse wedlock. And when a woman comes into the new customs and practices of her husbands house, she must somehow divine, since she has not learned it at home, how she shall best deal with her husband. If after we have spent great efforts on these tasks our husbands live with us without resenting the marriage-yoke, our life is enviable. Otherwise, death is preferable. A man, whenever he is annoyed with the company of those in the house, goes elsewhere and thus rids his soul of its boredom [turning to some male friend or age-mate]. But we must fix our gaze on one person only. Men say that we live a life free from danger at home while they fight with the spear. How wrong they are! I would rather stand three times with a shield in battle than give birth once.”(Euripides, lines 231—253) The above lines need no further explanation or elucidation. One can quite imagine a woman of our century feeling the same way too. There are many cultures today, which do not give women freedom of choice to live their lives the way they choose to. And even in so called liberal societies, social mores and sanctions set impossible standards of behavior for a woman—the choice of being either a Madonna or a Magdalene—nothing in between these extremes. This is not to say that Euripides was talking about liberating women, or being feminist, or anything remotely close to that. For in the day he wrote his play such notions were not entertained (though they did have the very rare liberated and accomplished woman—the poet Sappho, for instance). Neither is Euripides a misogynist, an accusation made by his contemporary, Aristophanes. (March p32). The earlier quote (lines 231-253) given above is ample testimony of the fact that Euripides is no misogynist. Instead Euripides was criticizing male tendencies of the day. Had he created a male character and criticized him, his audience may not have been so receptive to that. Therefore he created a female character in name, but with very definite characteristics of the male—violent and proud. “Euripides is asking his male audience to reconsider their male fixation with honor—when pursued by Medea, a foreign woman with who theyd find it especially hard to empathize, this pursuit appears dangerous and destructive. With the Athenian democracy voting to go to war almost every single year, it must be time for men to re-evaluate their traditional outlook. Remember the play was produced in 431 BC, the very year that the Peloponnesian War—that was to last 30 years—began between Athens and Sparta. It might be easier to see the flaws in male behavior, when the man is a woman. If you condemn her behavior (as surely the audience must) then you condemn the way most males behaved.”(!)(Classics Pages) There is a semantic and spatial interplay between the private and the public sphere, in this play. The private (oikos) sphere is associated with women and the public (polis) with men. A view has been expressed that the dichotomy (lack of harmony), which is the cause for the violence in Medea, is one between the public and the private spheres, rather than a dichotomy between the sexes. Spatially, the public sphere is depicted by the chorus; the private—and inaccessible to the audience—sphere is the inside of Medea’s home from which we hear voices. The inaccessibility is increased by the fact that Medea is also a foreigner—a barbarian. (Williamson ps16-17) Semantically, we hear a different kind of language being spoken. The voices and words that are heard by the audience emanating from the home are filled with unbridled emotion—anger, sorrow and hatred (Medea) and fear (the children at the end of the play.) The public sphere where the Chorus acts out its part is the voice of reason. Most of the action of the play happens at the intersection between the private and the public spheres. Medea herself is more masculine when shown outside the confines of the private sphere, when she becomes more plotting and scheming in a controlled, rationalizing and intellectual manner, similar to Jason, instead of being emotional. She also shows herself as independent by talking of the oaths made between Jason and herself, or the promise made by Aegeus to her. Here she talks of herself as equal to the men. Normally, in Greek society of the day, any agreement if made, would have been between Jason and Medea’s guardian. Medea herself would not have had the power to contract an agreement with anyone. (Williamson ps17-18) Euripedes’ Medea is a powerful play, and although for the sake of dramatic effectiveness, perhaps, some of the actions of the principal female character are extreme, it offers a fascinating and real insight into the character of a scorned woman—an insight that is timeless. Works Cited Classics Pages Euripides’ Medea retrieved 30th Nov 2007 Euripides Medea ed David Kovacs, retrieved 30th Nov 2007 March, Jennifer: Euripides the Misogynist? In Euripides, Women and Sexuality ed Anton Powell; Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 1990 Williamson, Margaret A Woman’s Place in Euripides’ Medea In Euripides, Women and Sexuality ed Anton Powell; Routledge ,Taylor and Francis Group, 1990 Read More