The role of women in Greek society is central to Euripedes’ play Medea.

The role of women in Greek society is a prominent theme in Medea, and it is the position of
women in society that allows the titular character to be brought so low and ultimately driven
mad, leading to the climax of the play in which she murders her two sons. In this essay, I will
discuss the role of women as possessions and trophies of men; the role of women as
mothers; and the role of women as second class citizens without agency. I will explain how
each of these societal roles are essential to the play.

It’s shown throughout the play that women are seen as objects to be used and discarded at
the whims of their husbands and fathers, and this is normal and accepted. This is
demonstrated primarily by the inequality in commitment Medea and Jason are expected to
have to one another.

When Medea comes onstage, her monologue is about the role of women and includes a
section how her feelings on marriage. She says that once women buy into marriages, they
are forced to accept their husbands as ‘possessor of [their] bodies’, and reflects on how
unfair it is that men are able to easily leave their wives, but for women, ‘divorce is not
respectable’. As Medea and Jason’s history is told, the audience understands that there is a
great inequality in commitment Medea and Jason are expected to have to one another,
which demonstrates uneven expectations for men and women. Medea gave up her magical
abilities, orchestrated the murder of her father, and fled her home in Colchis, all to take up
life as a commoner to be with Jason, thus cutting all ties with her family and making it
impossible for her to return (she says sarcastically to Jason she doesn’t expect her sisters
would give her a warm welcome if she came home). But Jason doesn’t have the same level
of commitment to her. She even gave him sons, despite hating the experience of pregnancy,
saying she’d rather fight on the front line three times than give birth to one child. Medea has
totally devoted herself to Jason as expected of a married woman in Greek society. However,
Jason does not acknowledge the gravity of these sacrifices at all throughout the play. He
discards her as soon as he sees a more appealing, useful partner in Glauce, Creon’s
daughter. The Nurse and Tutor comment on how quick Jason has moved on when they
discover he’s planning to have his sons banished with Medea, to assure his new marriage.
Though the Nurse is horrified at this, the Tutor accepts it, saying Jason is in love. This all
illustrates a double standard in the role of men and women in Greek society. Jason can
leave her on a whim for better prospects, but Medea’s role as his wife is that she is expected
to give complete loyalty to him, even after he marries another woman. This is such a
universally accepted role that even The Chorus of Corinthian women who generally side with
Medea, and tell Jason that he is ‘acting wrongly in abandoning his wife’ show some
acceptance of Jason’s new marriage. While Medea is seething about Jason, the Chorus of
women express concern and empathy for her, but even they tell her that ‘If your husband is
won to a new love - the thing is common’, encouraging her to move past it. This
demonstrates clearly that it is common and accepted for women to be treated as
possessions to be discarded, and that the norm is for women to accept the treatment Jason
gives Medea. That Jason is unmoved by how suicidal Medea is shows how dispensable
women were in Greek society. Medea even says that she was plundered from her homeland.
Jason’s new wife Glauce is to him a shiny new possession. His interest in her is
opportunistic. He wants her because she is younger, natively Greek, and offers more status,
but he does not express any romantic affection for her. As Medea says, ‘it’s royalty and
power he’s fallen in love with’. To Jason, the role of Glauce as a woman is to give him
entrance into the royal family - status. Also, Medea says that Glauce and Jason’s marriage
has been arranged between himself and Creon - therefore Glauce is being passed as a
possession from Creon to Jason. All of these instances shows that the role of women as
possessions to be used, discarded, and passed on by men is normal in the Greek society
Euripedes presents, and important in the play.

The role of women in Greek society as mothers is also central to the play. Euripides uses the
significance of motherhood to drive the plot and create dramatic intrigue. In part, Medea’s
motherhood to Jason’s children makes their separation especially dramatic. Medea herself
remarks that the fact that they’ve had children together makes the betrayal much worse. She
also says that if she wasn’t able to have children, it would be understandable why Jason
would choose to leave her. It is clear there is an expectation on her to bear children for
Jason. Medea’s role as mother is also important in that it serves to create dramatic intrigue.
In the prologue, the Nurse’s character sets up her fear that Medea will murder her children.
The importance of a mother’s relationship with her sons is what creates such dramatic
tension as the audience waits to find out if Medea will really murder them, and is what makes
it such a memorable part. One of the strongest moments of this is when Medea questions
herself and asks if she really can hurt their ‘young bright faces’ but then steels herself to
commit to the task at hand. Euripedes gives the audience a moment of hope, and allows
them to see humanity in Medea before snatching it away. Euripides clearly intended to
exploit the societal expectation of Greek mothers to create this massive climax.

Jason speaks on the role of women as mothers when he says to ‘if only children could be
got some other way, without the female sex!’, meaning that the role of women is to bear
children. This also highlights that even a misogynist like Jason cannot overcome the fact that
women are required for childbirth and essential if he wants to assure a lineage. This gives
women a very important role in society. Jason is hungry for status and legacy, and women
acting in the role of mothers is the only way he can assure that. Additionally, it’s worth noting
every woman in the play has a maternal role. Medea is a mother, Glauce is being married to
Jason to mother to royal children, and the Nurse has a maternal role taking care of Medea's
children. She protects them at the start of the play when she worries Medea might murder
them. Interestingly, the Nurse, whose whole existence is to be a mother by proxy, has no
character or story beyond her maternal role - not even a name. She is not written to have
any worries or concerns outside her care to Medea’s children. The facelessness of the
Nurse is a comment on the view in patriarchal Greek society of mothers as mere tools to
ensure safety of lineage. It is fitting, then that she introduces the play and reads the
prologue. Also, the fact that the nurse has been hired to look after the children and be a
mother by proxy illustrates that mothers are valuable and essential.

In the Greek society Euripides shows, women have the role of second class citizens with no
agency. The choral ode that precedes the manipulation of Creon emphasises the
wickedness of women and the unnaturalness of women having agency. Medea says to the
Chorus that women are useless for honest purposes but skilled at working evil, and the
Chorus agree. The choral ode has an ominous tone, and it the ‘honouring’ of the female sex
is held on par with sacred rivers flowing uphill. This reveals a strong misogynistic bent in
Greek society, conveying that the idea of women being honoured alongside men is as scary,
unnatural and impossible to the Greeks as rivers flowing uphill, establishes there is a
traditional expectation of women to be untrustworthy. It also points out how fixed the role of
women is that a woman being honoured alongside men is compared to an impossibly
flowing river.
Furthermore, women are only able to get by if they’re subservient to men, and only able to
exert their will on the world by accessing the agency of men through manipulation. Even the
brilliant Medea can’t orchestrate the murder of Glauce without manipulating Creon and
Jason. In order to prevent herself from being exiled from Corinth, Medea has to manipulate
Creon. In the first episode, he enters and says he’s banishing her because he suspects she
will kill Glauce. Medea responds firstly in anger, but then manipulates him. She downplays
her intelligence and emphasises her helplessness and lack of agency to him, and asks him
to think of her children. She plays into the role of a domestic wife, and even congratulates
Jason on his marriage. Creon initially doesn’t fall for it, but Medea persists and plays on the
role even heavier, clinging to Creon’s knees and saying that it is her sons she is worried
about. Creon accepts this, even though he’s still wary of her, because he doubts that she
can do too much in a day. Something similar happens when she pretends to reconcile with
Jason in order to poison Glauce. She apologises to him for being emotional and says she
was irrational. Jason is pleased to hear her submit to him, and even accepts the gift of the
wedding dress. The fact that he is so easily lulled into complacency proves how heavily he
expected Medea to admit she was wrong and conform to the role of an obedient wife.

Both Jason and Creon blame Medea’s rage on sexual jealousy because they’re unable to
understand that she has an emotional scope outside of sex, reinforcing the role of women in
Greek society as sexual objects. With both, she fatally manipulates them by playing the role
of a domestic, obedient woman. The expectation of women to hold an obedient, domestic
role is also asserted in the prologue, when the Nurse says ‘in marriage that’s the saving
thing - when a wife obediently accepts her husband’s will’. That they both easily accept
Medea’s helplessness is also indicative of the role of Greek women in society.

The roles of women in society are also central to ‘Medea’ in that it’s the intensely oppressive
roles that women are forced into that allows the titular character to be kicked so low by the
men around her, which is the subject of much of the plot. Her treatment by Jason as a
woman is the cause of her madness, and incites her to bloody revenge. It is Medea’s role as
a woman under Greek society which leads to the climax of the plot, the notorious scene in
which she murders her two children. Based on this evidence, it is clear that the role of
women in Greek society is central to Euripedeas’ play Medea, and that the role women take
in this play is to be objects, owned by men, as well as to be childbearers, and child-raisers,
and second-class citizens without agency. As Medea says, ‘surely of all creatures that have
life and will, we women are the most wretched’.