Student Essay on Women in Euripides' Plays

Explores how Euripides portrays his female characters in the plays Alcestis, Andromache, Medea, and The Bacchae. Describes how in Euripides' plays, there is no overall tragedy for women, but rather the evil crimes that women have committed were done against men as of the result of mans oppression against women.

Euripides portrayal of women in his plays has been somewhat bizarre. His female characters kill out of revenge, kill out of jealousy and kill because a god possessed them too. In Alcestis and Andromache Euripides does produce classic heroic female characters. The women in Medea and The Bacchae are not your typical heroines but serve to show the same theme of female liberation as the women in Alcestis and Andromache. While Alcestis is straight forward with its message, the other three plays mask their true intentions from the people they are created to oppose. Euripides might have been misinterpreted by his society because it was dominated by the very people he wrote his plays against. Euripides disguises some of his radical ideas to those who might oppose him and in Alcestis, Andromache, Medea, and The Bacchae.....