![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI read 'A Woman's Place in Euripides Medea' , Margaret Williamson, in Euripedes, Women, and Sexuality, Ed Anton Powell, Routledge. from 1990.
About 15 pages, but a quick read, because it all makes sense and refers tidily to stuff I've already read.
It makes more distinctions in greek - oikos and polis, philia and eros, I think are the main ones. More looking things up required, though I think it gives the basic idea.
Greek tragedy, it says, happens right in front of the oikos, at the place where oikos and polis meet. "the tragedy takes place at this intersection between inside and outside, private and public." It's about the clash between private and public.
Essay has a lot to say about the 'woman's place' of the oikos, and how when Medea steps out from the backstage-home to the stage and public life she switches discourses from emotional language associated with women to a sort of equal exchange and logical argument more associated with men. She talks about getting married as if it is a woman that buys a husband, but it was usually a woman's father sorting things out with the husband to be. When she married Jason it was with oaths, words in greek that aren't associated with marriage but with public life and contracts. When she sorts out with whatsisname from Athens to go live there instead it's like a marriage arrangement, where she promises him children and he promises to look after her, only even more public and about Athens the polis not about the oikos. So she's taking power to negotiate, and making private things public.
It doesn't actually say "And then she kills the children and gets raised up and powerful and let that be a lesson to you" but I kind of hear it in the subtext anyway.
But I was also thinking that a man is writing these things and maybe wouldn't get the distinctions. Only that wouldn't explain the thing the essay writer says is there where there's a bit at the start where she stays inside in the oikos and is more conventionally feminine.
There's another thing where it reckons that basically when she's talking to Jason about him betraying his family then she's being hollow and not a leg to stand on because she betrayed her family of origin and another family on the way there. But I thought that was her point, that she'd betrayed so many others she was so invested in Jason now, but he'd thrown it away. But I can see the other thing - she's complaining about his betrayals of family by listing her own. Doesn't look good.
Medea says she's good to her friends and bad to her enemies. Apparently that was a heroic ideal of the time, but a masculine one. Having enemies was a bit masculine? And getting rid of them was too. So she sounds like male heroes in other plays, when she's saying about punishing enemies. Which is a strange way for a woman to sound, comparatively.
So it is interesting useful essay. With lots of bits in greek with translations, and lots of notes at the end. And it says all this better than I just summarised, and with some more points I forgot.
Oh, like how because she was foreign it was a barbarian household, so it was inside home and outside foreign both at once, and right contradictory. Interesting.
I think I might like to read it again later, when I have more accumulated reading to stick it to.
About 15 pages, but a quick read, because it all makes sense and refers tidily to stuff I've already read.
It makes more distinctions in greek - oikos and polis, philia and eros, I think are the main ones. More looking things up required, though I think it gives the basic idea.
Greek tragedy, it says, happens right in front of the oikos, at the place where oikos and polis meet. "the tragedy takes place at this intersection between inside and outside, private and public." It's about the clash between private and public.
Essay has a lot to say about the 'woman's place' of the oikos, and how when Medea steps out from the backstage-home to the stage and public life she switches discourses from emotional language associated with women to a sort of equal exchange and logical argument more associated with men. She talks about getting married as if it is a woman that buys a husband, but it was usually a woman's father sorting things out with the husband to be. When she married Jason it was with oaths, words in greek that aren't associated with marriage but with public life and contracts. When she sorts out with whatsisname from Athens to go live there instead it's like a marriage arrangement, where she promises him children and he promises to look after her, only even more public and about Athens the polis not about the oikos. So she's taking power to negotiate, and making private things public.
It doesn't actually say "And then she kills the children and gets raised up and powerful and let that be a lesson to you" but I kind of hear it in the subtext anyway.
But I was also thinking that a man is writing these things and maybe wouldn't get the distinctions. Only that wouldn't explain the thing the essay writer says is there where there's a bit at the start where she stays inside in the oikos and is more conventionally feminine.
There's another thing where it reckons that basically when she's talking to Jason about him betraying his family then she's being hollow and not a leg to stand on because she betrayed her family of origin and another family on the way there. But I thought that was her point, that she'd betrayed so many others she was so invested in Jason now, but he'd thrown it away. But I can see the other thing - she's complaining about his betrayals of family by listing her own. Doesn't look good.
Medea says she's good to her friends and bad to her enemies. Apparently that was a heroic ideal of the time, but a masculine one. Having enemies was a bit masculine? And getting rid of them was too. So she sounds like male heroes in other plays, when she's saying about punishing enemies. Which is a strange way for a woman to sound, comparatively.
So it is interesting useful essay. With lots of bits in greek with translations, and lots of notes at the end. And it says all this better than I just summarised, and with some more points I forgot.
Oh, like how because she was foreign it was a barbarian household, so it was inside home and outside foreign both at once, and right contradictory. Interesting.
I think I might like to read it again later, when I have more accumulated reading to stick it to.