Women are constantly taunted in the workplace today. A man demonstrating the same qualities could be deemed a promotion, while a women with those same qualities will get called “bossy”. With woman always being deemed “emotion” and “less than men”, it’s almost unavoidable in today’s society. Though the root of it dates back to the Hellenistic Society, which is Greek tragical times. In Euripides's Medea, an irate woman feeling betrayed by her husband plans to annihilate anything of his. Similarly, in Sophocles’s Antigone, a young woman's emotions is what drives her to commit a crime and become sentenced to death. In both of Sophocles’ and Euripides’ plays, Medea & Antigone, the rash decision making of both protagonists, Medea & Antigone …show more content…
A popular belief in the Hellenistic Society was that a woman was only good for childbirth, and Jason even says “ life would have been better far for men to have for their children in some other way, and women not to have existed. Then life would have been good.” (Euripides 18). His tone is very condescending here, demonstrating his disdain for women by degrading them, by saying how they have no point in life besides childbirth. This greatly weakens Jason’s justifications for betraying Medea, and only further angers her. As said before, views like this were quite popular during this time, and made it hard for woman to hold positions in work, because they were believed to only be good for one thing, thus proving that they were seen as subordinate to men. This greatly weakens Jason’s justifications for betraying Medea, and only further angers her. Similarly, in Antigone, views that was similar to those of Medea are expressed. While talking about the dangers of getting with a women, Creon openly disregards women to Haemon: “Do not be fooled, my son, by lust and the wiles of a woman. You’ll have brought cold comfort if your wife’s a worthless one” (Sophocles 143). Creon illustrates his point by giving off a quite critical tone, saying that women are manipulative by lust and are only want to seduce. When left vulnerable, Creon believes they’ll act as cold shoulder, and won’t offer much support to the man. This connects to the larger idea of the play, that someone’s dishonor to the state, specifically a women, is what will ultimately cause their punishment. This reinforces the misogynistic & subordinate perceptions that women were faced with by men, and prevented them from getting proper