Sunday, September 15, 2013
Medea and Women
Medea is obviously all about gender. When Euripides wrote the play in the 400's BC, Athens was a heavily male dominated society, like most Greek city-states. Mr. Fitzpatrick talked to us about how playwrights were equivalent to politicians during this time in Greece because they would use their plays to send a message to the over 20,000 person audience their show was performed in front of. I believe Euripides uses Medea to point out the hypocrisy of the unjust life women were subjected to during this time.
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I agree. I feel Euripides used Madea to challenge the highly degrading Grecian perspective of women. Also, I feel he also is the first to introduce the idea of women and their power of influence over others. I think Madea serves as a warning to the Greeks that women can be just as powerful as men; perhaps not as directly (like in Madea), but indirectly influential.
Learning about Medea’s background partially changed my opinion about her. While reading the play, I admired her cleverness. I could sympathize with her pain that Jason caused, however I could never understand how she killed her own children. Learning about the gods’ intervention in her love life helped me more clearly understand her actions. Because of the gods, she fell hopelessly in love with a man who didn’t return the same love but instead betrayed their oath. Her passion and adoration for her husband that was ultimately not returned caused her to loose sense of her morals (which could happen to anyone not just a woman). Jason blames her anger on her excessive passion; however, this excessive passion isn't a result of her emotions but of the gods' intervention that forced her to fall in love with him. She can't kill Jason because she cannot defy the love that the gods imposed on her. Therefor, she seeks revenge in the best way possible, by hurting him through killing his children and potential wife. Also, learning about the status of children in ancient Greece helped me understand her actions. Like we talked about in class, children weren't seen as fully developed or as complete human beings. Like what we saw in Oedipus, the adults were willing to kill their own children to improve their fate.
I totally agree Megan that reading Medea in a bubble definitely makes you have a hard time understanding her actions. It's so crazy to think that in Ancient Greek culture children were thought of as less than human. In today's society, the loss of a child's life is so tragic, because he or she never had the chance to grow to adult hood while in Greece they were viewed as less than for the same reason.
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