Ethnicity, geography and social status in Euripides’ representation of women By Alexandra Neagu

https://www.academia.edu/28632669/Ethnicity_geography_and_social_status_in_Euripides_representation_of_women?nav_from=92ba7a80-c8fc-4be0-8c4e-846fbb55afa2 Eminently an Athenian institution, Greek ancient theatre addressed fifth century B.C. social and political issues by resorting to mythical figures. More than a show, it stood for a way of reuniting Athenians around representations of Greek society and of the confrontation between the social categories and ethnic groups that were brought face to face within the settings of a prolonged war. With the Peloponnesian conflict opposing the Athenians to other Greek cities, identity – be it ethnic or of gender – was continuously questioned. Both in tragedy and comedy, the individual underwent a series of transformations which forced him or her to continuously reaffirm and prove his or her identity. Analysing a series of Euripidian tragedies we note that as opposed to reality where only men went to war, women were represented as the primary perpetrators of violence and murder, in a context of treachery and occult practices. Such is the case of Medea, the Barbarian princess who, upon Jason’s infidelity and her imminent marriage dissolution, decides to murder her own children in order to take revenge on her faulty husband. Her position is not unlike that of the Greek princess Iphigenia who finds herself alone in a barbarian land in Tauris and is forced to sacrifice her own people, i.e. the Greek captured in the barbarian lands, to the goddess Artemis. These two examples allow us to address the issues of self-agency and of the construction of individual identity. While in both cases a woman is considered to be vulnerable if she is living among strangers with no husband and no friends and thus she needs to resort to violence to reassert her identity, Euripides seems to rank these women on the basis of ethnic criteria. While Medea is a Barbarian who kills her own children, Iphigenia is a Greek princess with high-valued function and status that explain her killings. By cross-examining these examples with the historical context of the Peloponnesian war, this paper will try to re-evaluate the representation of gender identity in the ancient Greek theatrical speech in the light of the intersection of ethnic, geographic and social standing criteria. Key words : identity, gender, ethnicity, geography, social standing, Greek theatre, Euripides, Medea, Iphigenia ...