The position of woman through each century has always been a great dilemma; some sought them as an important role of humanity whereas others thought that they were just slaves, inferior to men. On the other hand, some thought this subject fascinating such as Euripides, who clearly shows this through his play Medea.
Through his play, he shows the position of women and their subordination to men which was important in Greek society. Even though Athens, for example, was considered as a place, freer, than the rest of Greece was nevertheless a city that depended on slave labor and the oppression of women.Euripides wants to show the difficulties that befall women, however, his main character, Medea, is not a weak woman but a reel woman who has suffered and has become twisted through her suffering. Moreover, Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire is also a play on the role of woman in more recent society however; he does not choose to take a strong and hard-minded woman, but a weaker and more illusional character, Blanche. As one may see, the role of women in both of these societies has barely changed and so, through this analysis, we shall compare the roles of women through Medea and A Streetcar Named Desire.
One of the main themes of both of these plays is the way how the authors push their character to the extreme, making them, right at the start alone. Through Streetcar, one can see that Blanche has left her home, Belle reve, to live with her sister Stella and her husband Stanley. However, her native home, as one could say, was not left on a joyful criteria but on a sad event. Blanche lost this house through money problems, pushing her already to and extreme confrontation.
She is also a widow and so, desperately seeks companionship and protection in the arms of strangers.Moreover, she has never recovered from her tragic and consuming love for her tragic and consuming love for her first husband. Blanche is in need of a defender but in New Orleans, she finds instead the predatory and merciless Stanley. Through this play, her social status through her close entourage degrades and in the end, she is even ‘betrayed’ by her sister.
We find this theme in Medea, through Euripides’ main character, Medea, who, for the sake of her husband, has made herself an exile. She is far from home and has no friends r family and so, no protection in Corinth. Furthermore, her husband, Jason, abandons her for the princess and through Medea’s hard character, she has exiled her family. Due to her actions in Iolcus, Jason cannot return home nor Medea. This is presented at the start of the play, which shows a desperate and vulnerable situation that Medea has fallen into.
Euripides enforces the link between Exile and the position of women through Medea, when he is emphasizing the circumstances women must bear after marriage.Her position then is an exile in the sense of a stranger but also an exile in the sense that all women are exiles through marriage. However, the interesting part is how both authors chose different paths that their characters take to lead to their downfall. First of all, through Medea, Euripides presents us his character with a different approach, one rarely used in plays; strength through rage and vengeance. Medea is a woman of extreme behavior and extreme emotion. For her passionate love for Jason, she sacrificed all, committing unspeakable acts on his behalf.
But his betrayal of her has transformed passion into rage. Her violent and intemperate heart is now set to destruction which leads to her revenge. One could notice that this shows an image on how Greeks were interested by extreme emotions and it’s consequences. Medea is an example of passion carried too far, in a woman set on choosing rage over mercy. However, in Streetcar a completely different approach was taken by its author. In this case, Blanche has lost her plantation and her husband.
She has no other option than to go back to her roots and live with her sister.Instead of writing on a woman full of strength he took a different approach and made her close up in a fantasy world. Blanche’s illusion’s and fantasy’s are her primary means of self-defense, both against outside threats and against her own demons. This is consequence of her weakness an inability to confront the truth head-on. She does not see the world as it should be but as it ought to be. Fantasy has a liberating magic that protects her from the tragedies she has had to endure.
Throughout the play, she is confronted to a ‘primate’ character, Stanley.To survive, Stella also resorts to a kind of illusion, forcing herself to believe that Blanche’s accusations against Stanley are false so that she can continue living with her husband who is not ashamed to be the ‘king’ of the household. Another important characteristic on the role of women which is represented by a different approach on behalf of both authors is cruelty. As cited before, Medea is a strong female character who will fulfill her destiny through vengeance. Her, one can see a character that is not afraid of using unspeakable methods to get to her ends.Medea is willing to sacrifice everything to set her heart at peace by fulfilling her vengeance so carefully planned.
She murders her own children, paradoxically; to protect them from her enemies but also to deeply hurt her ex-husband, Jason. Even though, by killing them, she is dooming herself to a life full of grief and remorse. One could characteristically see that she has taken cruelty as a pleasure by killing all Jason’s entourage, so that he will suffer like she did. On the other hand, in Streetcar, according to Blanche, cruelty is the only unforgivable crime and is represented through Stanley.
On the other hand, she is dishonest but never lies out of malice. Her cruelty is unintentional. Her approach of cruelty, throughout this play, is from her well deceits to Stella self-deceiving treachery to Stanley's deliberate and unchecked malice. To conclude, one can see that female characters, throughout the plays, have a hard destiny in which, they have to find a way to survive. First of all, we have seen through Medea that Euripides decided to take the role of a strong-minded woman and lead her to a rather dark fate, showing the strength that woman have face to dangerous and unjust situations.On the other hand, Tennessee Williams decided to take another aproach on this matter.
He took a rather disillusional character and made her follow a path of fantasy in which she is able to hide herself. However, both lead to the same fate; as both main female characters reach the end of their destiny and find themselves either abandonned by the sole root of their familiy or sent to the gods. What we see is not a story of female liberation, but a war between the sexes in which all emerge scarred.
