Medea's Transformation

Ancient expectations for women include always putting the responsibilities of being a mother above all else, as shown in Euripides’ Medea and Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, as well as Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis. Both Clytemnestra and Medea exhibit motherly love and tend to those responsibilities, but commit atrocious, unladylike acts, which jeopardize the sympathy felt for them by an audience. The respective playwrights of each story use their character’s motivations and how they align with their roles as mothers first and women second to ultimately characterize each in either a negative or positive light. The motherly motivation that Clytemnestra and Medea exhibit excuses their vengeful and deceitful actions, however Medea’s final action,

The major trait that leads to Jason’s downfall is his overwhelming pride. Medea knows she can use his ego against him and says, “I have reproached myself. ‘Fool’, I said, ‘why am I so mad?’” (p.53). Medea toys with Jason’s need to be above others and always right. Jason doesn’t even think twice about Medea’s sudden change to a servile attitude and accepts how her “mind has turned to better reasoning” (p.54). The arrogance of Jason makes him blind to what is happening around him. Medea is obviously manipulating this weakness to work to her just like how everything works for her: the children work to kill the bride and the deaths work to exact revenge upon Jason.

Medea’s strength is portrayed as her madness as she takes control and decides the fate of her enemies. She is a strong character and Euripides allows Medea to have a voice by allowing the audience to witness her break from the norm of what a woman of her time is expected to do. After giving up her family and former life to be with her husband, Jason, he decides to marry a younger princess while still married to Medea. Medea realizes that women are left to face the most miserable situations and says, “We women are the most unfortunate creatures” (229). Jason feels that Medea is to be grateful for what he is doing by marrying into royalty as it will afford all of them a better life. The representation of Medea by Euripides is powerful, manipulative, and extremely smart, yet because she is a woman she has limited social power.

In Medea, Euripides uses irony to convey the fact that the female protagonist is strong in the androcentric society and the male protagonist is weak. In the article “Male Medea,” Nancy Rabinowitz describes the protagonist as “the transgressive woman, [or man] inside the woman's body, and her story gives the lie to the gender story--of the woman as victim” (16). Medea, the female protagonist, has the power to control and manipulate any character in the play. This is proven when the Tutor says “Madam, your sons do not have to go into exile; the royal bride gladly took the gifts in her hands; there’s peace now, with her and the children” (1001-3). This represents irony because the sons do not go into exile, but are instead killed by their masculine,

From the beginning of the play the conflict between good and bad where Medea and Jason are concerned has been ambiguous. Both characters have done terrible things in order to attain what they want. Nothing could stand in the way of them including Medea’s father, whom Medea betrayed and to pile on the grieve she kills her brother and drops parts of him into the sea so as to delay her father thereby ensuring that Jason and his Argonauts could fulfil their quest to attain the Golden Fleece. When Jason betrays Medea and walks away from their marriage we immediately identify him as the villain, yet the reader fails to understand that during that time when this play was written it was still socially acceptable for the man to walk away from his marriage provided he gives back the dowry he attained from the wife’s father. In this case Medea did not bring any such items so it was even easier for him to leave her so as to empower himself. It was Medea’s role as a woman belonging to that age to accept Jason’s decision however she feels betrayed that he would break a vow made in front of the gods, and apparently she was not a regular woman even by the standards of that time as she had an intellect that could rival that of scholarly men. So to exact her revenge she destroys everything Jason loves leaving him to regret ever betraying the marriage.

The duty of women portrayed in Greek society is a major subject in Euripides Medea. In old Greek society, ladies are delicate and compliant as per men, and their social position is viewed as exceptionally mediocre. Feminism is the hypothesis of men being viewed different in contrast to women and the male predominance over ladies in the public eye. Women's lives are spoken to by the parts they either pick or have forced on them. This is obvious in the play Medea by Euripides through the characters of Medea and the medical attendant. During the day and age which Medea is set ladies have exceptionally restricted social power and no political power by any stretch of the imagination, despite the fact that a ladies' maternal and residential power was regarded in the protection of the home, "Our lives rely upon how his lordship feels." The constrained power these ladies were given is diverse to present day society yet parts are as yet forced on ladies to acclimate and be a devoted spouse. Ladies have dependably been dis engaged because of their sex in present day and antiquated circumstances alike. In Corinth they are required to run the family unit and fit in with social desires of an obedient spouse. Medea, being an eternal and relative from the divine beings has a specific power in insight and guileful keenness. Being an outsider, Medea's wayward nonsensical conduct was normal in this play as she was not conceived in Greece and was viewed as an exotic foreigner. She goes over to the group of onlookers as an intense female character regarding viciousness. Some of Medea's responses and decisions have all the earmarks of being made a huge deal about as creators for the most part influence characters to appear to be overwhelming; this makes a superior comprehension of the content and the issues which are produced through the characters. Medea's ill-conceived marriage and the double-crossing of Jason drive Medea to outrageous vengeance. Medea acts with her immortal self and confer coldhearted demonstrations of murder instead of legitimize the results of her actions. Medea see's this choice as her lone resort as she has been exiled and has no place to go, "stripped of her place." To make sensitivity for Medea, Euripides

Medea’s conflict with Jason proves to be the main conflict in the play, which really sheds light into the fact that Euripides created this play to challenge the notion of feminism. After Jason’s betrayal, Medea decides to take control. It is evident in the way she manipulates other characters within the play, and how she handles situations she is in, that she is quite intelligent. Her motivation and will to accomplish her own goals, portrays Medea as the complete opposite of a typical patriarchal woman who embodies the norms of patriarchy in Greek society. In the play, Jason says, “I married you, chose hatred and murder for my wife – no woman, but a tiger…” (1. 1343-44) This quote shows the misogyny with Jason, because he is saying that him and the society have made Medea this way. But maybe Medea started acting

In Euripides' Medea, the protagonist abandoned the gender roles of ancient Greek society. Medea defied perceptions of gender by exhibiting both "male" and "female" tendencies. She was able to detach herself from her "womanly" emotions at times and perform acts that society did not see women capable of doing. However, Medea did not fully abandon her role as a woman and did express many female emotions throughout the play.

Medea questions the firmly held belief in Greek society that women are weak and passive. Wanting revenge on Jason for his betrayal of her, Medea must take control of the situation, a stereotypical masculine quality. Though she cannot become a man or take power like a man, she perceives her

Euripides created a two-headed character in this classical tragedy. Medea begins her marriage as the ideal loving wife who sacrificed much for her husband's safety. At the peak of the reading, she becomes a murderous villain that demands respect and even some sympathy. By the end, the husband and wife are left devoid of love and purpose as the tragedy closes.

Medea is the tragic story of a woman desperate for revenge upon her husband, after he betrayed her for another woman’s bed. It was written by Euripides, a Greek playwright, in 431 B.C. Throughout the play each character shows us their inconsistent and contradicting personalities, in particular, Jason and Medea. The play opens with the Nurse expressing her anxiety about Jason betraying and leaving Medea for another, wealthier, woman. Our initial reaction is to feel empathetic towards Medea, who has been abandoned so conveniently. But towards the end of the play, when Medea takes revenge on

Charlotte Bronte once said, “Women are supposed to be very calm generally, but women feel just as men feel. They need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do. They suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow minded in their more privileged fellow creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags”. In the play Medea, Euripides diverged from the traditional role of Greek women through Medea’s characteristics and response to her plight. In delineating the role of women, Medea was unlike any other Greek character. Medea was portrayed

In Euripides' play the title role and focus of the play is the foreign witch Medea. Treated differently through the play by different people and at different times, she adapts and changes her character, finally triumphing over her hated husband Jason. She can feasibly be seen as a mortal woman, Aristotle's tragic hero figure and even as an exulted goddess.

Creon continues by telling Medea that he has heard of plans she has made to harm him, his daughter, and Jason and is exiling her

Amongst Euripides' most famous plays, Medea went against the audience's expectations at his time. Indeed, the main character of the play is Medea, a strong independent female who neglected moral and . She was therefore in all ways different to how women were perceived in Ancient Greece. This essay will explore how Euripides' controversial characters demonstrate that his views were ahead of his time.