Medea is a prominent play by Euripides that has endured centuries. Medea is perhaps of more significance today than ever before due to the increasing force of the feminist movement. Euripides’ stance on feminism is unclear as there is evidence that supports and neglects the text as proto-feminist; hence it is no wonder there are several different interpretations. One possibility is that the spectator or reader’s view of Medea—as feminist, sexist, or any variation of the aforementioned—reflects his or her own beliefs. An alternative interpretation of the text is that it reflects reality. Sophocles himself said: “I portray men as they should be, but Euripides portrays them as they are.” Being a feminist in a patriarchal society entails living with daily contradictions and inconsistencies; therefore, the obscurity of the text is justified. While Medea’s words suggest, for the most part, that she is a feminist, her extreme actions suggest she is a female chauvinist.
Euripides wrote Medea in 431 BCE, a time when women in Athens were treated as men’s property and deprived of legal rights to citizenship, education, among others. In fact, there is no word for “woman” in the Greek language. The Greek word for wife, gynos, literally translates into “under the yoke.” For the most part, women
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Since the chorus does not intervene with Medea’s plot to seek revenge on Jason, it may be understood that the chorus identifies with the injustices Medea so powerfully denounces. The following lines support this idea: “Recompense is coming for the female sex. No more shall we women endure the burden of ill-repute.” (419-421) Typically, the chorus represents the collective unconscious, suggesting that the idea that women are the weaker sex has been so deeply infixed in the audience’s mind that they perceive it as normal and Medea’s actions as absurd, when, in reality, Medea is trying to demonstrate the