The Image Of Greek Women In Euripides’ Tragedy

Euripides is one of the three greatest ancient Greek tragic dramatists. His work excelled in delicate descriptions of people’s inner feelings, and enjoyed a reputation for creating vivid images of many women. His tragedy gives an outline of subordinate women’s life in 5th Century B.C., not only as valuable literature, but also as a meaningful question itself—in those tragedies, how much of the details is the reflection of authentic history?Reviewing all his available tragedies, we may easily figure out that the conflict between the male and the female runs through all these dramas, contributing as key factors in plot. And those dramas reveal that, in 5th century B.C., no matter ancient Greek women had the Greek citizenship or not, they were not living a silent or reclusive life. So this paper would be put forward as a summary of ancient Greek women’s image, by analyzing the reason why those images are created, and studying the dramatist’s political intention in his particular temporal and social background.Euripides’works mark as the third stage of the development of ancient Greek tragedies. Even long time has passed after the fall of Athens, many of the tragedies he left were still well received by poets and scholars. However, those women’s images were created with strong political intention, to show his great concern for the most important group in the states -- women. In other words, he considers the balance and development of the states in the perspective of gender relationship.This paper summarizes traditional women’s roles in Euripides’tragedies, namely daughter, wife (or concubine), and old lady, and provides an analysis about the women’s image in religious activity as well. In ancient Greece women were admitted by men in most religious activities. Besides relating the image of women to fertility as one of the reasons, men would shirk the responsibility for performing“unholy ritual”. There’s another kind of women described in his tragedies, who went against the ancient Greek tradition. They bravely shook off the outmoded conventions of ancient Greek, said“NO”to unfair ethics that were oppressively placed on them. They even question the ancient Greek Gods, and took part in the war of ancient Greek in their unique way.To present a reasonable clarification of women’s images in its historical background, this paper would not be limited to texts of Euripides’tragedies, therefore, women’s images in those tragedies would be compared with the ones in other literature and research findings as well. Meanwhile, a comparison between women in the pre-Qin times and the women in the ancient Greek (6th– 4th century B.C.), is also provided as a sound reference to understand the women’s social status.