Euripedes: Medea Blog Post #1

Euripedes: Medea Blog Post #1

The generalized point of Euripedes “Medea” was to express inequalities of women in society, the favoring of the heroic male in Grecian society, and the consequences of women obsessing for revenge from their societal role. Medea was given in to insecurity as Jason decided to leave her and marry his secret lover, a socially acceptable thing for men to do in society. Women were connoted as being bad and wretched, as Medea’s character clearly displays given her occupation as a sorceress. However, this occupation was one of the only roles of power married women had in society as the man was the powerful, controlling gender in society. Medea was obsessed with having the power of revenge on Jason she went as far as killing her beloved children. The following lines depict the point of the play–

Medea: …But I am deserted, a refugee, thought nothing of

By my husband–something he won in a foreign land.

I have no mother or brother, not any relation

With whom I can take refuge in this sea of woe.

This much then is the service I would beg from you:

If I can find the means or devise any scheme

To pay my husband back for what he has done to me–

Him and his father-in-law and the girl who married him–

Just to keep silent. For in other ways a woman

Is full of fear, defenseless, dreads the sight of cold

Steel; but, when once she is wronged in the matter of love,

No other soul can hold so many thoughts of blood.

            The words “refugee” and “defenselessness” illustrate the powerless role of women in society. The use of the word “refugee” especially shows females as worthless beings in society that do not clearly belong for any specific reason. “Defenselessness” shows that men are the all-dominating gender in society as women live their lives as a resulting circumstance of their husband. The last word, “won,” illustrates that men in society were victorious heroes and claimed women as property, just like an honorary medal they would receive for an honorary act of war or something of the like.

            The understanding of the point I originally had is slightly altered by the given passage and the words in the passage chosen to illustrate the point. The passage makes the point of the play to seem as if women simply sought out sugar daddy’s to take care of them. Whereas the diction chosen in the passage make women seem extremely dependent on men, Euripedes probably chose these particular words in order to convey the true injustices of women in society and that the role of women was a product of something women themselves had no control over.