Women Challenge Patriarchy
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Equality between women and men is not a new issue that is raised lately, but it has been there since the rise of ancient Greece, many authors and mythologies wrote about it, and its been showed in many great literatures such as Medea by Euripides and Agamemnon by Aeschylus. These two novels are discussing the same issue about male dominance and how only few women decided to fight and challenge this patriarchy. The two main characters Medea and Clytemnestra were suffering from the injustice in the Greek society as them as any other woman that lived at that time, and of how their husbands are receiving advantages and power just for the sake of their gender. Medea and Clytemnestra challenged their husbands powers and patriarchy; they shared some similarities in the cause of their vengeance, but meanwhile had some differences in the way they took revenge.
Both Clytemnestra and Medea felt that death is the only justifiable action that their husbands deserve for what they have done; the difference is that Medea did not kill her husband, but made him taste the pain of death surrounding him. Jason used all his power for his own good, and against Medea, even after what she has done for him, he still divorced her just to advance his life situation by his second marriage. Medea used the strongest way of revenge in the history, which is using Jasons own children against him. Medea was a wise woman, and she knew that men become very weak when they lose their children, especially sons because there will be no one left to carry their names or the throne after them, and this showed when she said “For those children he had from me he will never see alive again, nor will he on his new bride beget another child, for she is to be forced to die a most terrible death by these my poisons” (Medea, 803). Agamemnon also used his power for his own good, by sacrificing his own daughter Iphigenia to the Gods in order to win the war, without even letting Clytemnestra know, and after
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the victory he brought Cassandra home with him as a concubine. Clytemnestras heart was burning on her daughter the whole time he was away in the war, so she thought that the best revenge is to kill him after the victory that he sacrificed his daughter for, by saying “he slaughtered like a victim his own child, my pain grown into love, to charm away the winds of Thrace” (Agamemnon,1417).
In addition, Medea and Clytemnestra challenged the patriarchy of the Greek society by being the original reason to what their husbands became to. Starting by Medea, she challenged her father patriarchy by escaping from him; and in order to distract him she killed her brother on her way to buy time; this shows in her quote “and I myself betrayed my father and my home” (Medea, 483). She also killed the serpent that was guarding the Fleece as she said “also that snake, who encircled