Allen Jeffrey Gurfel Thucydides Response Paper

CORC 1110 August 13, 2014

Prof. JoAnn Luhrs

In Athens of the later 5th century BCE, where Euripides Medea was first
presented, gender roles were clearly assigned. While women were seen as meek and
weak, men were seen as proud and strong. While it was for men to win honor and
glory, it was for women to bear children. Women were seen as, by nature, irrational,
clever, deceptive, and prone to passions; men were seen as, by nature, rational,
direct, practical, and honest. These views are evident in Euripides play Medea. Yet
we see reversals of gender in the playand ultimately, in the character of Medea
herself, a complete rebellion.
From the opening of the play, we enter the gendered world of Ancient
Greece. We find a woman nurse lamenting the woes of her mistress, Medea, who has
been used and now abandoned by her husband, the formerly-adventuring, power-
and honor-seeking Jason. This illustrates the position of women: there is no easy
escape for a woman, nor can she say no to her marriage (67, lines 236-237). A
woman must take for [her] bod[y] a master; for not to take one is even worse (67,
lines 233-234). Once married, the realm of women is the home. Medea resents this
more acutely than the native Athenians for unlike them Medea, as she says, is
deserted, a refugee . . . . in a foreign land with no mother or brother (67, lines
255-257). While we see here womens subordinate role to men, we also begin to see
an element of reversal and rebellion. It is true that Medea is alone in a foreign land,
but we cannot forget the reason: she has left her own land, fleeing after assisting
Jason in obtaining the Golden Fleece and evading the traps set by her father, King
Aetees, and killing her own brother. Shes saved Jasons life in the past; shes
manipulated on his behalf; shes adventured and been exiled with him. This is not
the meekness and weakness allegedly characteristic of women. And now that she
has been spurned, she will not passively take it but will instead actively and single-
mindedly seek her revenge. This at once demonstrates a jealousy typically assigned
to women and a strength and determination typically assigned to men.
We see a similar reversal, or at least ambiguity, in Jason. He comes to Medea
accusing her of typical womanly exaggeration, irrationality, and passion meanwhile
presenting himself as logical and rational, unmoved by passion, seeking advantage
by cold-hard calculation. He attempts to present a carefully ordered rebuttal of
Medeas accusations against him. Medea, however, sees through his rhetoric, calling
him nothing more than clever (77, line 585), a characteristic typically ascribed to
women, possessed of a tongues power to adorn evil (77, line 583). Of course
Medea is right, and the chorus agrees: Still I think . . . . you have betrayed your wife
and are acting badly (77, lines 577 578). Medeas accusations stand. She has done
all for him and he, an ungrateful, unmanly coward, has betrayed her. In this
exchange Medea assumes the more masculine position, using superior rhetorical
skill, a masculine trait, to berate Jasonwhy is there no mark engraved upon men. .
. . we could know the true ones from the false ones (75, lines 518, 519)and win
the agreement of the chorus.
There are two clear episodes in which Medea takes on the feminine role.
First, there is the scene in which she supplicates Creon, pleading on bended knee for
his mercy and for one more day in Corinth: But do listen, I beg you! . . . . Have pity
(70,71, lines 336, 344). Second, there is the scene in which Medea summons Jason
back and mendaciously admits that she was wrong and he was right, asking
forgiveness: Jason, I beg you to be forgiving toward me./I have reproached myself.
Fool, I said. . . .Why am I against those who have planned wisely? (88,89, lines 869,
873-874). It appears that all is right with the natural order, but not so. In both cases
appearance is deceiving and the truth is subversive. In the first instance, Medea is
merely buying time to enact her revenge for Jasons incredible slight against her
honor. In the second instance, she is enacting that very revenge. She is the one in
control; the men are dupes.
Ultimately, The Medea is very ambiguous with regard to gender: it can be
read as a critique of womens roleswhat they say of us is that we have a peaceful
time (67, line 248) when in reality gender roles mean that women are the most
unfortunate creatures (67, line 231); it can be read as evidence of womens
frivolity, vanity, and vicious jealousyfor examples the following, if your life at
night is good,. . . . but, if . . . things go wrong you will consider your truest interests
most hateful (77, lines 570-573), if she is like the rest of us women Gauke will be
unable to resist some giftsfar fairerthan those in fashion (91, lines 945-948),
and What is more, you were born a woman, And women, though most helpless in
doing good deeds, Are of every evil the cleverest contrivers (72, lines 407-409). In
light of the preceding quote, Medeas final act of violence can be seen as the extreme
fulfillment of a womans love, so full of trouble (102, 103, lines 1290-1291), the
consequence of unrestrained passion. Tragedy as the result of a loss of control, a
giving in to emotion, an abandonment of reason, however, is a norm for not only
Greek Tragedy but for Tragedy of the Western tradition more broadly, and this goes
for male and female characters.
Medeas final act of violence, the killing of her own children, admits of a
different interpretation. As Lattimore writes in his introduction, the Athenians
would have known Medea as a barbarian princess. Her exile from wild Colchis is
simultaneously a move into her new Greek world. Instead of living among
barbarians Medea, for better or worse, was given life among the civilizedyou
inhabit a Greek land and understand our ways, how to live by law (76, lines 537-
538)and among their conventions, including those of gender. And what good has
it brought her? None, only misery. In killing her children, she not only rejects the
civilized norms of the Greeks, she casts off and cuts out the very heart of femininity
and of the womans role in Greek society, motherhood and the bearing of children.
In this instance, she rejects all roles and conventions, and in this moment Medeas
Womanhood and her foreign Otherness coincide. Even in the face of this monstrous
deed, Euripides refuses to punish her (except in the form of her own suffering) as a
matter of the narrative, instead giving her a way out in the deus ex machina.
Euripides views on gender, and gender itself, at least in the Medea, turn out to be
murky, ambiguous, and fluid, a far cry from the neat categories with which this
essay opened.