2022 IB Diploma Extended Essays

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Introduction Throughout history, playwrights have recognised that strong women regularly rebelled against their societal patriarchal constraints. Since it was first performed in 431BC, there has been conjecture whether Euripides intended his play, Medea , to advocate feminism or misogyny. Mambrol argues that in shocking the audience with a female lead, Euripides intended the play to be encourage feminism: “Euripides violates its audience’s most cherished gender and moral illusions” (Mambrol, 2020). Conversely, Messing reasons that Medea encouraged society to question prevailing beliefs “at the expense of women, not in their support” (Messing, 2009), as Euripides’ plays have encouraged greater scorn and suspicion of females by society. In 2012, playwright Mike Bartlett adapted Euripides’ Medea , into a play also titled Medea , and placed Medea’s character in the twenty-first century in order to better understand how society would react to Medea’s situation in this time period. In both plays, the protagonist Medea behaves in a stereotypically ‘masculine’ manner, steadfastly refusing to give into any cowardice, rather demonstrating anger and bravery towards Jason’s betrayal. Whilst the production of the plays, Medea by Euripides and Medea by Mike Bartlett reflect society’s perception of women in the different social contexts of the time periods, each version accomplishes this to varying degrees. For instance, in the original Medea, Euripides’ controversial stance of his protagonist behaving unexpectedly controversial stance of his protagonist behaving unexpectedly to what was expected of women of his time, may have been an effort to humanise Medea to appear to be not only a woman, but a human being with all the requisite emotions. Contrarily, the modern version of the play does not reach that level of controversy, because whilst women still struggle against patriarchal expectations, have greater legal freedom to react to their problems.