The modern woman finds comfort in the story of Medea. For us, this is the story of an abused wife taking charge and enacting revenge on the man that destroyed her. All that she had done for Jason, leaving her family behind and doing unspeakable things to others all for the sake of him, and he left her for a princess in the name of power. When we see Medea, high in her heavenly chariot, delivering her final words to Jason, we find in ourselves a deep and raw power than comes from seeing someone so like us doing what we’ve always dreamed- taking power and reveling in it. But for the ancient woman, this was not the case. For them, Medea was a warning in the form of an unruly woman.

The low ranking of a woman in ancient Greek society meant that no woman would ever see herself on the stage. The female characters we see in ancient plays were typically young male actors, some even castrated to keep their high voices for the role. With this in mind, Medea becomes less of an empowering female role and more of a caricature. Because for the Greek man, this was all they feared in a woman- Medea had, in their mind, betrayed her husband for not being submissive. Killing Jason’s new wife and father had cut him off from his chance at power, something that was perhaps even more important in ancient Greek society than it is now, and killing their two sons denied him of a bloodline. The death of his children meant there would be no one to say the ancestral prayers for him, no one to leave offerings at his tomb. Effectively, Medea had denied him an afterlife.

What we find empowering in modern day is exactly what the Greeks feared in a woman. Medea is strong, intelligent, and headstrong. She details in length her hatred of childbirth, her loathing of her place in society as a woman. Sound familiar? The things we laud in modern feminism is precisely what made ancient man so afraid of their wives and daughters. Medea, in length, shows us how far we’ve come, and how far we have left to go.