Euripides () is one of the authors of classical Greece who took a particular interest in the condition of women within the Greek world. In a predominantly patriarchal society, he undertook, through his works, to explore and sometimes challenge the injustices faced by women and certain social or moral norms concerning them. His female characters, often endowed with detailed psychology and artistic depth, were central to his tragedies and made up almost all of his characters who thought and philosophized. Euripides portrayed women not only as capable of possessing true intelligence but also used them to convey critiques of the condition of women to the audience of his plays.
The playwright developed a series of original literary or artistic techniques to humanize his female characters, offering them a unique capacity for action and thought within Greek tragedy. He frequently subverted myths to rework the roles of heroines in his works and challenge their traditional narratives. Medea and Helen are two figures that Euripides significantly redefined in this dynamic, using them to question Athenian masculine ideology and highlight the social issues affecting Athenian women. Euripides addressed a range of social, political, or familial issues that impacted the women of his society, focusing on female sexual desire and the taboos surrounding it, openly criticizing marriage, the intellectual marginalization of women in Greece, and implicitly attacking authors of misogynistic narratives, such as Hesiod. His philosophical and literary advancements credit him with, in a way, creating women as subjects in Greek literature.
These artistic and philosophical stances had led Euripides to be targeted by Aristophanes as a misogynist; by portraying women as capable of wrongdoing, including sexual misconduct, Euripides would be undermining women's interests. This accusation is no longer upheld by modern scholarship, which notes, on the contrary, that Euripides occupies a unique place in Greek tragedy on this subject. However, despite these positions and perspectives, the playwright's writings also remain marked by a sexism and misogyny typical of his time and the circles in which he operated.
Context
Greek society as a patriarchal society
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
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
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.
Among the figures affected by these innovations are his Medea, Phaedra, and Helen, among others. However, it seems that his interest and perspectives on these subjects evolved, as before producing Medea, the artist was credited with two other tragedies where she would have been portrayed particularly negatively, in line with the traditional Greek view. This humanization sought to make male spectators aware of the issues affecting women within Athenian society. Thus, in his Helen, he used his heroine—the main character of the work—to represent a certain idea of the Athenian woman, aimed at raising the audience's awareness regarding their own domestic situations. Euripides also engaged in creating multiple "servants", giving a voice to women from disadvantaged social classes and introduced a number of his plays through a female character, contributing to the audience's empathy for the heroine.
Continuing in this dynamic, the playwright partially described Athenian domestic life by presenting the domestic world where women were segregated and where female solidarity likely existed, which is reflected in the solidarity of the female characters in his plays. Iphigenia from Iphigenia in Tauris seems to refer to this idea when she responds to the chorus by stating,
He ignored the usual controversies in theater against feminist and female political claims of the time and instead preferred to give dignity to his female characters and create situations where the necessity of integrating them was demonstrated. The playwright linked the idea of family to that of the polis. In his writings, he pointed out that just as women are defined by their relationships with their fathers, husbands, and sons, men are defined by their relationships with their mothers, wives, and daughters. He was also very aware of women's psychology, and this is reflected in his works.
Euripides' treatment of women in his plays appears completely isolated and unique within Greek tragedy, although he remained influenced by the usual elements of the cultural and intellectual environments in which he operated.
Reversal of myths
At the same time, Euripides engaged in a vast endeavor to overturn myths. While the children of the Medea-Jason couple died under uncertain circumstances in Greek myths, the playwright seized upon this and made her the perpetrator of their murder. Although such a portrayal may seem particularly pejorative, Medea was actually absolved of the crime, which was an almost logical reaction to the actions of a sexist and adulterous husband, far removed from the heroic Jason of the Golden Fleece. Euripides approached the episode of Medea with a new perspective, seeking to emphasize male lies and deceptions rather than the possibility of Medea committing evil.
Euripides worked to purify as much as possible the mythological elements that presented Medea as a witch, and in doing so, he almost excessively humanized her. She was no longer haloed with magic, although she was very intelligent and capable of creating drugs and poisons. He employed this technique with other women, separating them from witchcraft to portray them simply as intelligent individuals capable of using poisons. For Medea, the absence of any magical power was reinforced by the fact that she found herself abandoned by Jason in a foreign land (Corinth) and isolated, all of which suggested that he did not depict her as a character capable of supernatural actions. Furthermore, Medea was divided between her feminine and masculine traits, until the end of the work, where both dissolved into her "superhumanity" and were transfigured in tragedy—making it particularly complicated to assess the author's intentions and choices.
In his Helen, Euripides again broke with the myths: 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