Euripides Gender Roles

The Role of Gender in the Works of Euripides and Aristophanes

Ancient Greek society was patriarchal in the sense that males held all the power and authority and consequentially had rights and privileges that women did not. For their part, Athenian women in particular were viewed as highly emotive creatures whose only duties in society were to bare children and serve their husbands. Athens, a city that prided itself on its democratic traditions and freedoms, paradoxically were very oppressive to their women in comparison with other Greek cities. Of course, this is not to say that everyone agreed with the existing gender paradigms. In fact, an analysis of the works of Greek playwrights Euripides and Aristophanes suggest that the opposite is true. Both playwrights
explore the female experience and challenge their proper role in society – Euripides through the use of gender-transcendence and Aristophanes through the use of gender-inversion.
In Euripides’ plays Medea and Hecuba, the author highlights the difficulties faced by women in society and employs gender-transcendence to challenge the existing gender roles and accompanying ideology in ancient Greece. By giving the female protagonists of the plays Medea and Queen Hecuba both feminine and masculine characteristics, Euripides attempts to undermine the concept that an individual’s competence or incompetence was solely reliant on whether they were masculine or feminine. Medea, for instance, is characterized by both her intellect and her emotional tendency. Intellect was seen as a typical masculine characteristic, and Greek men were even believed to have “think [women] clever and hate [them]” for it, as Medea herself contends in the play. Moreover, her hubris that eventually leads to her downfall is her pride, which of course is another masculine characteristic. Emotions played a large role in Medea’s doomed fate as well. After falling passionately in love with Jason, Medea uses her cunning and powers as a sorceress to help Jason acquire the Golden Fleece and in doing so commits serious crimes of treachery and murder. In would seem that while their marriage was
still intact Medea was content serving her role as mother and more importantly servant to her husband. It is not until Jason abandons Medea for Glauce, daughter of Creon, that she proclaims to the Chorus of Athenian women that, “We women are the most hapless creatures”. At this point, Medea is so upset she contemplates suicide, but instead transforms from a victim wallowing in self-pity to an avenger. While it is true that she is broken-hearted, it becomes evident that Medea’s later behavior is motivated primarily by her pride, being that Jason has wounded her ego so badly. Medea, we find, is an expert at manipulation, which she uses on Creon and Jason to exact her revenge. Ironically, the ease with which she manipulates these two male characters suggests that Medea is cleverer than those around her in positions of power. Though the character Hecuba is not nearly as clever as Medea, the two female protagonists are alike in their circumstances and reactions. When we are first introduced to Queen Hecuba of Troy we are inclined to sympathize with the woman whose city and family has been destroyed in the Trojan War. To make matters worse, the action of the play begins with the sacrifice of her daughter Polyxena, and soon after her son Polydorus is found washed up on the shore, having just been murdered. The discovery of her son’s body sparks an emotional transformation in Hecuba, where, much like Medea, she transforms from hopeless victim to avenger. In addition, like Medea, Hecuba employs manipulation in order to achieve the vengeance she seeks. Again, the ease with which this is achieved by a female character suggests that Euripides himself had doubts about the logic that justified the existing gender paradigms. Hecuba first manipulates Agamemnon into agreeing to help her exact vengeance. Later, she tricks Polymestor, whom she suspects murdered Polydorus, into thinking she wants to tell him where her treasures are hidden in Troy. When Polymestor and his two sons arrive however, Hecuba murders his two sons and stabs out Polymestor’s eyes. Hecuba’s reasoning behind her decision to blind Polymestor rather than kill him is similar to Medea’s horrific decision to commit infanticide. Both women want their enemies to suffer greatly, and by keeping Polymestor and Jason alive they can be sure that they are miserable, whereas in death they’d be relieved of their misery. In contrast to the gender-transcendence evident in Euripides’ work, the female characters in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata take on masculine characteristics and perform roles appropriated exclusively to men in Greek society. The play has a comic element to it that is almost satiric, and allows for the author to reveal existing anxieties about the status of males in Greek society, while making sure not to offend his male audience. Aristophanes himself was believed to be a feminist, and this play is evidence at least that he believed women could, and perhaps ought to, challenge gender roles and exercise agency over males by wielding their natural feminine power of sexuality. At the beginning of the play, the protagonist Lysistrata is eagerly awaiting the arrival of the other women to discuss her plan to end the Peloponnesian War, a brutal war between the different Greek states that had gone on for too long. The idea of women taking part in the business of the polis or possessing knowledge about war would have been comical to the audience because it would have seemed absurd and impossible. When the women arrive, Lysistrata commands that the woman seduce their husbands and then when “the men are all horny and can’t wait to leap on [them], keep [their] distance and refuse to come to them”. The women agree to collectively withhold sex from their partners until the war is over. At one point in the play, a fight breaks out between the Chorus of Old Men and the Chorus of Old Women wherein the women emerge victorious, another example of Aristophanes’ use of gender-inversion. An assumption of a patriarchal society is that men are without a doubt stronger and more physically powerful than their female counterparts, which would have made winning a fight between the sexes relatively effortless for men. When the magistrate arrives at the Akropolis and is confronted by Lysistrata and the band of women, we see a complete role-reversal in both men and women. The women force the token male in this case, the magistrate, to dress up in women’s clothing and tell him to “take this basket, and not one word more, card wool all day”. For a time, the male is reduced to the subordinate status common to women in Greek society, and the women for their part, have exerted political control and authority. In ancient Greece, as in most every patriarchal society, the words “power” and “surrender” are appropriated to each sex exclusively, with males expected to wield power and females expected to surrender. However, in Lysistrata, it is the men who are forced to succumb to their wives demands and negotiate a peace treaty to end the war. A celebration ensues, but not before the women, who have achieved their objectives, surrender their power and revert back to their roles as subordinates. Normal order, it would seem, has been restored.

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[ 1 ]. For this essay, I will be using William Arrowsmith’s translation of Euripides’ Medea (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1960). Euripides, Medea, page 550
[ 2 ]. Euripides, Medea, page 550
[ 3 ]. For the purpose of this assignment, I will be using Alan Sommerstein’s translation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. Aristophanes, Lysistrata, page 146.
[ 4 ]. Aristophanes, Lysistrata, page 162.