Women in Euripides

Greek society as a patriarchal society , red-figure wedding vase, c. 430 BC Classical Athens in the 5th century BC, and more broadly the ancient Greek city-states, were organized around significant phallocentric structures and phenomena that were reinforced during this period. Women faced complete legal discrimination, as they could not be citizens and did not enjoy the civic rights of the city. They were also constantly placed in a position of inferiority compared to their male counterparts. Generally, women were under the authority of the closest male relative, whether it be a father, husband, or son. The cultural and artistic production of Athens during this time was marked by significant sexism and various intellectual processes undertaken to legitimize male privilege. In the 5th century BC, the city was experiencing military, cultural, and artistic expansion; to support its imperial ambitions, a "national" Athenian mythology gradually formed. This ideological framework, which spread throughout Athenian and Greek society, not only supported Athenian imperialism but also contributed to propagating rape culture. These progressive processes were closely linked to the slavery practiced by the city, which expanded significantly during the classical period. Birth of classical theatre Alongside these political and social developments, classical theatre was largely taking shape. Although the practice of tragedy had been attested since the archaic period, the classical era saw its development reach new heights, to the point of nearly creating the genre, according to Jacqueline de Romilly. In the Attic city, the three great Greek tragedians—Aeschylus (c. -525/-456), Sophocles (c. -495/-406), and Euripides (c. -480/-406)—saw their careers intersect and follow one another, each contributing their share of innovations to tragedy, theatre, and art. Theatre, as a public art partially funded by the liturgies of citizens, served as a privileged space for political and social critique. Thus, it appeared as a mirror reflecting the social and political issues of the city and was part of the trajectory of Athenian democracy, which saw it structure and thrive. Particular aspects of Euripides' life and thought , Rome, 2nd Century AD, Louvre-Lens Euripides, born between 484 and 480 BC, has a biography that is difficult to establish and is touched by numerous legendary elements. He was reportedly disliked by Athenian citizens for his refusal to conform to societal norms and his supposedly inaccessible character, with legendary accounts even suggesting that he took refuge in a cave facing the sea to write undisturbed. In any case, the artist was not heavily involved in civic life, and while it is unlikely that he completely neglected his civic responsibilities, he does not seem to have practiced them extensively. He may have personally known Socrates, although he was older than him, and this remains uncertain; he was also a favored target of Aristophanes. Euripides is distinguished by a series of philosophical and artistic positions that he seems to profess, as well as by the great attention he places on the concept of freedom, which he articulated in various ways throughout his works. In general, he was interested in the "issues related to the constitutive polarities of Athenian ideology", that is to say, the oppositions between women and men, slaves and free people, foreigners and Greeks, among others. In this regard, the playwright presented slavery, the foundation of Athenian society, as a product of force and therefore fundamentally unjust. For example, in one passage from Hecuba which almost advocates for the complete abolition of slavery, the chorus leader exclaims: Furthermore, the playwright was educated in philosophy and rhetoric; he was fully integrated into and a driving force behind the intellectual innovations of the period. Despite being described as unpopular among the Athenian populace, his death was marked by public funerals, which tend to relativize this possibly biased portrayal in ancient sources. == Women in Euripides ==

Women form a central subject of Euripidean thought and art. Of his nineteen surviving plays, thirteen feature female protagonists (68%) and fourteen female choirs (74%). In comparison, only one out of seven plays (15%) by Aeschylus could potentially have a heroine, and this is uncertain. For Sophocles, two of his seven (29%) surviving plays have female protagonists. General treatment of women and the female condition as a priestess of Artemis in Tauris sets out to greet prisoners, amongst which are her brother Orestes and his friend Pylades; Roman fresco from Pompeii, 1st century AD One of the central aspects of Euripidean art is the effort to place the audience "inside his characters by deep sympathy". The playwright was engaged in a "constant search for truth and realism", which drove him to treat women or marital subjects with interest. In this context, Euripides developed detailed female characters with real personalities. This phenomenon is so prevalent that women make up almost all of his characters who think and philosophize. while Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, chose to follow Paris to Troy, triggering the Trojan War, the "original sin" of Greek mythology, in the playwright's version, the subject was not only refocused on her, who was the heroine of the play; but she was replaced by a "phantom of Helen" during the Trojan War by Hera. This phantom provoked the war, with Menelaus gathering the Achaean army to retrieve this illusion, leading to her mother's suicide, the destruction of Troy, her captivity, her exile, and the loss of her husband. Far from embodying treachery, Euripides created her as a faithful, free woman—not confined to a gynaeceum—refusing to make her the culprit of the war, thus rehabilitating, through her, all women. Moreover, she openly rejected her beauty several times, preferring maternal modesty. Regarding her beauty and the curse it placed upon her, the Euripidean Helen exclaimed: Heroic reversal Euripides unfolded a particular conception of heroism, which evolved to "gradually become the domain of women". Thus, Hecuba is shown more heroic than Agamemnon, a representation of masculinity. Helene P. Foley described the absence of dialogue and the heroic reversal that characterized Medea in this way: In certain passages of his work, such as in Medea, Euripides employed several literary techniques to reify men, making them passive figures, while he subjectivized women, making them the primary acting forces in the relevant passages. Roles reversal n red-figure volute krater, ca. 360-340 BC, Painter of Bari 12061. In undertaking his reversals, the playwright overturned the roles traditionally assigned to women or men in two different ways. First, he placed a number of heroines—Helen, Clytemnestra, Medea, Alcestis, or Iphigenia—in roles of admirable mothers, wives, or daughters, who adhered to Greek moral criteria, but thus achieved "ironic results". Secondly, the author more prosaically reversed the roles between women and men. Women were often portrayed as morally and physically courageous, intelligent, capable of thinking and executing a plan, little concerned with social norms, or willing to die for their values; men, on the other hand, were more frequently represented as cowardly, impulsive, or gullible. Ruby Blondell supports this view by citing examples such as Menelaus in Helen, who tried to flee at the first difficulty, Admetus, who ignored the importance of Alcestis before she died, or Clytemnestra, who openly told Agamemnon that she would kill him for the murder of Iphigenia, but the king of kings did not believe her or did not understand her. Women and slavery Euripides focused on slavery, particularly female slavery, in several of his plays, such as Andromache, The Trojan Women, or Hecuba. A number of barbarian women were depicted in relation to slavery, especially Trojan women. The poet also explored the connections between men and female slavery. The men, who were supposed to be the protectors of the women of the city, like the walls, were also, paradoxically, the ones who enslaved women. In these plays, it was actually the men who were presented as an otherness to women, rather than the reverse. Sexuality, taboo, and silence If his Helen is removed from male desire through a reversal of the myth, female sexuality becomes a privileged subject in Euripidean art. First of all, the playwright offered women the opportunity to feel and express their sexual desire, even—perhaps especially—when it conflicted with Greek moral norms. In his now-lost Veiled Hippolytus, the Phaedra he portrayed was "shameless" and fully embraced her incestuous desire for Hippolytus, provoking intense debates within Athenian society about her character. In his Bellerophon, it was Stheneboea who expressed an illicit desire for Bellerophon's guest, drawing criticism from Aristophanes in The Frogs. Among the surviving Euripidean works, The Trojan Women, Andromache, and The Bacchae sporadically address female sexual desire. Furthermore, Euripides seemed to link sexuality and female desires to the idea of silence. Since it was shameful for them to express these forbidden desires, the playwright focused on describing the expression, or lack thereof, of these desires. Dana Munteanu noted the connections that the playwright established between female sexuality and silence by stating: == Men and gods linked to Euripidean women ==

Rhetorical reduction of misogyny When Euripides portrayed his male characters, he sometimes gave them sexist and misogynistic speeches and practices, as seen with Jason and Hippolytus. This misogyny even led to the downfall of certain Euripidean heroes, such as Pentheus in The Bacchae. The playwright crafted extremely misogynistic discourses for them, reducing Athenian cultural misogyny to its simplest form, characterized by visceral reactions and prejudices. Hippolytus expressed this sentiment in one of his speeches: This reduction of the prevailing misogyny to its most primal expression was likely a deliberate choice by Euripides to critique the hubris of his society and the ideology that suggested an ideal polis could be experienced without the presence of women. The drama no longer targeted merely the hubris of individual characters but that of society as a whole. Maenadism and feminism wearing a theater mask of Silenos (AIC, 4.2014), 1-100 CE, Art Institute of Chicago (AIC). Euripides showed interest in the Maenads, figures significantly linked to the condition of women in the Greek world, through certain male characters. Thus, the Dionysus of The Bacchae is described by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch as a "revolutionary feminist", particularly because he liberates women by sending them to live as Maenads in the mountains, a means of emancipating them from patriarchal oppression, according to her. In this play, the last of the playwright, Dionysus first liberates the women before creating his ideal city in nature, on the mountains—a city of poetry and freedom—contrasting with an Athens engaged in the censorship of art. Fatherhood and daughters Contrary to the prevailing opinion expressed in most Greek texts of the period, Euripides valued having daughters. He believed that having a daughter could bring happiness to her father, and that a daughter would therefore not be any more useless than a son to a father. This position is reflected in fragments of Danaë, as well as in The Suppliants, where one can read: == Open critiques ==

Patriarchy and marriage , 330-320 BC, Pushkin Museum. Euripides did not engage exclusively in implicit methods aimed at reevaluating the role of women and politicizing their situation. He also deployed a series of arguments and texts to openly criticize what he perceived as injustice. Thus, the author explicitly critiqued the ideology that suggested women lacked eros, meaning desire, toward wisdom and knowledge. For him, female intelligence was not a danger. In Medea, the chorus openly attacked such a position in a passage that more broadly critiques the intellectual marginalization of women in the Greek world: Furthermore, Euripides questioned certain Greek family structures, particularly marriage, which he addressed in part through female experiences. The fact that women were divided between their previous family and their new adoptive family—transitioning from being the possession of their father to that of their husband—is highlighted in several of the playwright's works. This critique of the male privilege that arises from Greek marriage crystallizes in the "feminist" tirade of Medea during the first act of the eponymous play: This description that the Euripidean Medea provides of her situation also aims to raise public awareness regarding issues affecting women in Athens. She questions other ideas, such as the dowry system, with the poet concluding the tirade with Medea's indignation against the very laws of nature. This episode transforms the attitude of the chorus from rational support to militant support for Medea. Critique of Hesiodic narratives In reality, the chorus of the play supported Medea's speeches and overturns traditional Athenian masculine ideology by criticizing men. This was likely a reaction to the narratives of Hesiod or other poets, such as Simonides of Ceos, regarding women. Although Euripides does not explicitly mention them and refers simply to "ancient bards" and the "male sex/age of man", the chorus clearly aims to challenge the prejudices that targeted women in the myths. In this regard, it declares: == Ancient critiques, reviews of his thought and limitations ==

Conflict with Aristophanes and misogyny? Aristophanes engaged in extensive polemics targeting Euripides, accusing him of misogyny for portraying women as guilty of crimes and capable of malevolent thoughts. In his critiques directed at Euripides, Aristophanes created female characters who criticized the treatment he believed they received; however, the comedic portrayal rendered them in a very pejorative and sexist light, often incorporating the idea of their innate guilt in these passages. He was also frequently disingenuous in his accusations. When Aristophanes criticized Euripides' incestuous Phaedra as lacking virtue, he either misinterpreted or feigned misunderstanding of his target's intent. Indeed, although Euripides represented her as incestuous, this does not mean she was blameworthy—his Phaedra was, in fact, virtuous, realizing the immoral passion inflicted upon her by Aphrodite and willing to die to uphold her honor against that passion. Jacqueline Assaël noted in this regard that while Euripides spared Phaedra from harsh treatment, he was far less delicate with the "lecherous" tyrant Theoclymenus in Helen. Furthermore, a series of Euripidean female characters are not blameworthy at all. Reflecting on Aristophanes' attacks against Euripides, she stated: The categorization that Aristophanes made of his positions had significant repercussions for the memory of Euripides. According to biographical legends surrounding his death, he was either devoured by dogs or "torn apart" by women. Euripides, feminist? In reality, the fact that Euripides is the only tragic playwright whose ancient sources note and discuss his treatment of women indicates that he is the only one who treated women as such. He is the only tragic figure to grant them a "deliberate treatment" and, in a certain way, nearly created the woman as a subject within Greek literature. Jennifer March, revisiting the question of whether Euripides could truly be considered misogynistic according to the criteria established by Aristophanes, concludes: Assaël, for her part, argues that in Euripides' work, "tragedy arises from a destroyed happiness, from a thwarted passion. Women either experience it or desperately trigger it. And the poet is moved". The figure of Euripides as a feminist was appropriated by suffragettes during their political struggles in the early 20th century. They particularly recited the "feminist" monologue of Medea at some of their meetings and viewed the playwright in a positive light. Limits and discrepancies However, despite the particular perspectives that the playwright chose on a series of points concerning women, the Euripidean works remain marked by significant sexism and misogyny, This athletic education, with the athletic body being perceived as deeply sexual by the Greeks, would explain why the Spartans were seen as more sexually immoral than other Greek women by the playwright. To illustrate this discrepancy between a feminist Euripides and a Euripides who perpetuates sexist clichés, Munteanu compares a fragment from Melanippe the Captive, a nearly entirely lost play where the playwright writes, "Women are better than men, I will show it", with a quote from Medea where, on the contrary, one finds, "We are women, capable of committing good actions, but even more of bad ones". Georges Raepsaet shares the same analysis of the discrepancy between the feminist Euripides and the misogynistic Euripides and Kjeld Matthiessen states: == References ==