Medea and the Womens Movement

1963-2005

Written by: Ruth Macdonald

I
dont know if I have ever known a woman that is completely Medean in what she
does, but I certainly have known a lot who feel what she has felt.[1]
The past fifteen years has seen Greek tragedy performed on a larger scale
than ever before. Equaled perhaps only by the Oresteia, modern
productions of the Medea have surpassed all other productions of Greek
drama.[2] Furthermore, it is possible to directly relate the numbers of
theatrical productions of the Medea with the womens movement. With a
particular focus on British theatre, but with international comparisons
drawn where appropriate, this article will attempt to demonstrate the
historical development of the Medea in dialogue with the feminist thought.
Tony Harrison writes:
The universal themes of ancient drama must be particularised for each age: they
need new language and new performances. Poetry must constantly be written by
modern seers, and performed in ways that touch hearts.[3]
It is in this way that Euripides Medea has come to express twentieth- and
twenty-first century preoccupations with the ambivalent nature of the
feminine. Embedded in a complex network of relations ranging from the
socio-historical to the theatrical, the significance that the Medea commands
in its most recent incarnations will be demonstrated in its ability to either
perpetuate a given societys values and beliefs or reveal its fears, anxieties
and contradictions.
The political and cultural shifts experienced in the late 1960s were marked
by, among other cultural and aesthetic phenomena, an increase in the
numbers of radical Greek tragic performances than had ever been seen
hitherto.[4] The years directly preceding and following 1968 saw a social
revolt against the conservative culture of the 1950s. This counterculture was

characterized by the election of increasingly left-wing governments [5],

student-worker riots [6] and protests against the war in Vietnam. It marked
a turnover in political consciousness and a movement towards a more
liberated society, which would include freedom to create and express ones
self outside of strictly defined roles and hierarchical statuses, particularly in
terms of race and gender. Writers and directors saw in Greco-Roman drama
a potential vehicle for the debate of these contemporary issues.[7] On the
big screen as well as in the theatre, contentious, contemporary politics were
being displaced into a classical setting.[8 ] For Edith Hall, the advent of the
second wave of feminism in the 1960s is the most obvious reason for the
recent renaissance of Greek tragedy in performance.[9] With their often
domesticated settings and plots involving either one or more of sex,
parenthood and inter-familial power struggles,[10] Greek tragedy allowed
the artistic exploration of the 1970s feminist slogan: The Personal is
Political.
Immediately following the Second World War, the British government
sought the perpetuation of the nuclear family so as to ground the new
welfare state. Despite womens contribution to the war effort in the 1940s
they were encouraged to resume domestic roles through a series of acts
which not only created a dearth of childcare facilities but implemented
government-funded family allowances which supported the woman solely
in the capacity [of] wife and mother.[11] Hence the media of this period
(characterised by such television dramas as Father Knows Best,1954-1960)
sought to perpetuate idealised domestic expectations which Betty Friedan
claimed forced women to find meaning and identity solely through
domestic roles.[12] As well as Friedans book, The Feminine Mystique, the
1960s saw the popularisation of Simone de Beauvoirs The Second Sex
(translated into English 1953). Writing: one is not born, but rather becomes,
a woman,13 Beauvoir challenges the notion of what she terms the Eternal
Feminine i.e. that which society denotes as being essential to one
biologically gendered as female which has in turn been internalised by
women through societys regulative discourses. Although it would be
reductive to say that a movement towards female equality was entirely
absent previous to the late 1960s,[14] it is apparent any movement geared
towards female social improvement perpetuated rather than challenged
womens socially-prescribed domestic roles.[15] It is with this in mind that
the attempt by second-wave feminists to create alternative images of the

feminine should be examined. In Philip Vellacotts 1963 translation of

Euripides Medea, the chorus looks towards a future time when such
alternative imaging will be available:
CHORUS: Streams of the sacred rivers flow uphill;
Tradition, order, all things are reversed . . .
Legend will now reverse our reputation;
A time comes when the female sex is honoured;
That old discordant slander
Shall no more hold us subject.[16]
This passage serves to encourage women to perpetuate and respond to the
kind of alternative imaging that is being presented before them in the
person of Medea. The almost prophetic tone of this prediction makes
change seem inevitable and the use of the present tense all things are
reversed; Legend will now reverse our reputation; That old discordant
slander/ Shall no more hold us subject serves to locate the play
simultaneously in the historical past and in the present of the dramatic
production. Compared to Gilbert Murrays 1907 translation, which uses the
future tense to look forward to a time when the hard hating voices shall
encompass her no more, [17] a sense of inevitability rather than mere hope
prevails. This served to create a theatrical context where Greek tragedy was,
and remains, favoured by actresses and playwrights because of the way the
heroines defy conventional portrayals of women on-stage.[18]
Nonetheless, it is reductive to claim that the choice of the Medea as a
touchstone for female empowerment is not problematic. Yet it is not only
her filicide which makes her an unlikely role model. In translation
adaptations especially, Medea is prototypical of the Homeric/ Sophoclean
hero and thus her values are that of the traditionally masculine sphere, not
the feminine.[19] Thus her appropriation by the feminist movement can be
seen as contradictory as she is empowered that which is strongly coded as
masculine. The final encounter between Jason and Medea in Vellacotts
translation [20] serves to demonstrate a transposing of masculine
characteristics onto female characters and feminine characteristics onto
males. Furthermore, through this, value is attributed only to that which is
defined as male. Throughout the exchange, Medea has the upper hand,
whereas Jason riles against her and begs to bury the bodies of his children;
terms which Medea refuses. During this scene, Medeas stance in her
golden chariot physically symbolises her empowerment whereas the

powerless Jason wails beneath her on the ground. This empowerment, thus
masculinisation, of Medea serves to feminise Jason; femininity is
subsequently degraded and devalued.[21] The violent agency expressed
through her acts allow her to create a new version of her self but only
through the destruction of her female self which is symbolised by the act of
murdering her children. Hence rather than destabilising male heroic values,
such productions may in fact be seen to perpetuate them.
Plays based on the Medea myth and, although less often, the Oresteia myth,
have been prominent in the latter half of the twentieth century, eclipsing
other productions of Greek tragedies almost entirely [22]. The postFreudian shift from the early-twentieth century Oedipus the Everyman to
Medea the Everywoman can be seen as representative of a more general
shift in focus away from the phallocentric. For Edith Hall, from the late
1960s the Medea has been re-written and adapted to explore female
subjectivity through the transfer of female experiences of sex, motherhood
and politics from the margins of the plot to its centre.[23] Hence
productions of the play began to focus more intently on issues of sexual
freedom, economic and political equality and, most controversially,
reproductive rights. This transformation was aided by a series of legislation
which helped to bring the discussion of human sexuality into mainstream
society such as the Obscene Publications Act (1959), the publication of the
previously banned Lady Chatterleys Lover (1961) and manuals and
manifestos for a newly sexually-liberated, and often female, audience.[24]
Furthermore, the publication of feminist material such as the anthology
Sisterhood is Powerful (1979) and Sexual Politics (1970), meant that such
material was reaching larger audiences than ever before. In terms of the
Classics, the publication of Michel Foucaults History of Sexuality
(published in English 1977-1986) could be cited as particularly influential in
introducing the ancient world to a modern discussion of sexuality.
Theatrical legislation in 1968 abolished the strict censorship under which
drama had previously suffered, resulting in the presentation of plays
previously banned for their unsuitable (often nude or sexual) content.[25]
In this more permissive atmosphere, the issues surrounding sexuality could
be explored on-stage in ways which challenged the sexual norms
perpetuated by society. Revolution in terms of theatrical practice coincided
with this revolution. The 1960s saw a movement away from naturalism
towards a focus on the expression of the self and self-conscious

performativity. Simultaneously, the rise of regietheater meant that the

purpose of drama was no longer to convey the perceived meaning of a
primary text.[26] This resulted in the increasing practice of directors to take
liberties with a text in terms of its staging, location, both temporally and
geographically, casting and plot in order to speak to a modern audience
concerned with the self-conscious expression of individual identity against
the forces of society. The wave of productions of female-centered Greek
tragedies can also be charted against the emergence of feminist theatre
which developed from a general sense of the marginalisation of female
experience in other forms of theatre in the late 1960s.[27] In Britain and the
United States, translation performances of the Medea, such as that by Philip
Vellacott (1963), and again the Women of Corinth speech in particular,
dominated the stage.[28] Instead of Gilbery Murrays 1907 translation of
women as things upon earth that bleed and grow,[29] Vellacotts women
are creatures that have life and will.[30] Rather than passive acceptance,
action is called for. Throughout the Women of Corinth speech, women in
the audience are asked to identify with and are incensed into action by
Medeas repeated use of the pronoun we against issues which included,
but were not restricted to, sexual, political and economic double standards.
The issue of the sexual liberation of women and their rights to control their
fertility through readily available contraceptives and access to abortion
came into the spotlight through the campaigns of women such as Carol
Downer in the late 1960s/ early 1970s and have remained prevalent in
adaptations of the Medea today. In Brendan Kennellys Euripides Medea: A
New Version (1991) the Women of Corinth speech is suffuse with even
heavier body politics than normal:
MEDEA: Men, the horny despots of our bodies,
sucking, fucking, licking, chewing, farting into our skin,
sitting on our faces, fingering our arses,
exploring our cunts, widening our thighs,
drawing the milk that gave the bastards life[31]
For Simon Goldhill, a modern production of the Medea should evoke
sympathy and fascination, even if also hinting danger. For him, the violence
of Kennellys expression may serve to alienate audiences from identifying
with the character and her articulate hatred of men; yet for others it may
serve as a cry against the regulation of female sexuality,[32] against its
ownership by despotic men who curb womens rights to explore their

sexual identities out with that which they experience in a heteronormative,

monogamous relationship.
Furthermore, the Medea poses a challenge to the institution of motherhood
in a climate where even today, the stigma of child murder attaches itself to
the act of abortion. In conjunction with the related phenomena of
infanticide, the act for which Medea is most infamous, themes of hostility
towards children is apparent in most renderings of the myth. John Fisher
(author of Medea, the Musical, 1994) was quoted as having said:
People love this women killing kids . . . Its weird. Killing kids is not okay! Killing
kids is never okay but for some reason its okay for Medea. Its an interesting
audience phenomenon.[33]
In relation to this, Margaret Reynolds writes that Medeas dismissal of her
natural maternal feelings is a dismissal of her socially-constructed
femininity;[34] a painful and self-destructive yet necessary, resistance to
cultural constructions of gender.[35] Ethyl [James] Eichelbergers Medea
opens with the following lines:
Am I an evil woman
tis you must be my judge
listen impartially
be equanimitous
then loose the venomous hate from your heart
spit at the mirror Medea
the image you see will be yours[36]
Unlike the previous encouragements of Vellacott, this provocative opening
statement forces the audience to not only identify with Medea but see
themselves as her and her actions as theirs. Yet for John Fisher, the choice of
Medea as representative of female empowerment with regards to this
matter is questioned in his Medea, the Musical. In it the two protagonists,
Paul and Elsa, discuss the creation of a feminist performance of the Medea.
Throughout the performance, Elsa challenges Medeas voice as a suitable
representative for all women, culminating in the exchange of dialogue
below:
JOHN: Killing your children is a feminist act. Its the ultimate act of selfempowerment. Its like burning your bra
ELSA: No . . . Its a mans idea of a feminist act.[37]
Hence Medeas most famous act of self-definition is contested. Although it
can be seen to represent the point at which she rediscovers her essential self

beneath the socially-constructed ideas of femininity, for Fisher it is more

problematic, perhaps more of a destruction of the self entirely.
The 1980s saw a move away from the second-wave of feminism into what
is now termed the third wave.[38 Racial differences and gender studies
have come to influence discourse, challenging the western-European frame
of reference and the ghettoisation of non-mainstream feminist thought.
Despite feminism's apparent lack of appeal today, it is not to say that
feminism and feminist theatre is no longer an important cultural
phenomenon. If anything, the genre has thrived and productions of the
Medea are even more prolific than ever before;[39] the past thirty years has
seen an exploration of the now fragmented and factional nature of
feminism being explored on the stage, often using the Medea myth to do so.
The emergence of specifically lesbian and black womens theatre companies
in the late 1970s is simultaneous with this tendency for self-conscious,
introspective and autobiographical drama rather than an anti-man debate.
[40]
It would be reductive to claim that the Medea remained the sole property of
the feminist movement in all its historical guises. Franz Grillparzers Das
Goldene Vlie (1821) was a commentary on violent anti-Semitic riots in
Austria (1817-1818) but it was not until the twentieth century that dramatic
productions of the myth, which alongside those of the Antigone [41],
became increasingly focused on Medeas ethnicity.
Racial discord in America informed the choice of a an ancient dramatic and
ethnic context in early coloured or multi-racial productions, allowing
necessary distancing of the problematic subject matter.[42] Most modern
incarnation of the Medea, however, combine both race and gender politics.
It is Greek dramas susceptibility to reinterpretation that makes the Medeas
appropriation by coloured feminists possible. The title of the 1982
anthology All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of
Us Are Brave: Black Womens Studies sums up a central issue for coloured
feminists: that in exploring interracial relationships with black men only,
white feminists create a false representation of interracial and intersexual
understanding and alliance. It is this identification against white bourgeois
feminism that prompted the formation of all-coloured, all-female theatre
groups which sought to produce drama which would reflect the values and
interests of feminists of colour and provide alternative cultural
representations of black women aside from that which denoted her as

doubly-othered from the white male norm.[43] In this light, racially-driven

productions of the Medea no longer focused on the protagonist as
representative of an entire race but as a black woman a term which, in
these productions, cannot be understood as mutually exclusive. Wesley
Enochs Australian Black Medea (2005) climaxes at the point where
indigenous Australian actress, Margaret Harvey, cries out: I am Medea[44]
after killing her, significantly, white male child. The very words do not serve
to be inclusionary; the audience are not invited to identify with Medea but
recognise her as separate from their experience. Unlike Vellacotts and
Murrays wes, there is only I. Medea does not seek to endorse massidentification against a common enemy (men or whites) but instead
highlights the separate experience that she, as a woman of colour,
experiences. The act of killing her son, who can be seen as representative of
bothWestern bourgeois feminism and black male sexism, serves to
symbolically sever her identification with either.
Another aspect of the third wave of feminism stems from a poststructuralist interpretation of gender and sexuality. This development from
the idea that there is an innate female identity to be sought out and
represented (as posited by Simone de Beauvoir) to a theory that argues
against the notion of gendered identity in its entirety is expounded in the
work of Judith Butler who writes that gender is performative and that
beyond culturally signifying acts which express ones gendered identity as
either masculine or feminine, gender identity does not exist.[]45
Furthermore, in order to make this transparent, one must highlight the
performative nature of gender through e.g. drag performances. It is within
the context of this cultural phenomenon that adaptations of Greek tragedy
have come to explore the fluidity if gender boundaries and the stability of
heteronormacy. This overlapping issue between the gay and the feminist
movements is more striking in Japan and the United States than in Western
Europe or elsewhere due to a number of mitigating cultural factors.
For Foley, modern drag performances of Greek tragedy express gender
instability in two ways. The first is that it is the most androgynous figures
who have graced the late twentieth and twenty-first stages.[46] The second
is that the female roles of Greek tragic heroines have attracted not only
actresses to the roles but also male actors keen to take on some of the most
challenging roles in Western theatre.[47] Defending his choice of an all-male
cast in his production The Oresteia (1981), Tony Harrison writes:

To have women play in our production would have seemed as if we in the twentieth
century were smugly assuming that the sex war is over . . . The maleness of the
piece is like a vacuum-sealed container keeping this ancient issue fresh.[48]
However, if cross-dressing entails gender troubling, this is not to say that all
drag performances are necessarily positive artillery for Harrisons sex war.
Yukio Ninagawas Japanese Medea (1978) stems from a heavy concern with
gender roles in Japan combined with a growing interest in Greek drama in
the East, facilitated by Asian translations of ancient texts. Although
claiming to seek the empowerment of Japanese women,[49] the all-male cast
may simply serve to highlight the fact that the play is both written by and
for men. The actor playing Medea, Tokusaburo Arashi, uses traditional
Japanese dramatic techniques such as kabuki to self-consciously play
Medea the mother against Medea avenger. In the scene where Medea
struggles between whether to kill her children or let them live, Arashis
modulation of his voice between that denoting female (i.e. Medea the
mother who refuses to kill the children that she has borne and nurtured)
and that denoting male (i.e the male-gendered avenger of honour who
repudiates the maternal weakness which stalls her). The simultaneous
removal of the female costume, but retention of the female mask, to reveal
the male body beneath gives the act of killing the children by their mother a
powerful gendered dimension. The killing of the children is no act of female
empowerment and the removal of the costume does not represent the
casting-off of societal definitions of femininity; rather than forming an
attempt to express female subjectivity, the production is seen by Foley as an
invitation for men to play the other.[50]
Over in the United States, the use of female impersonators in the
adaptations of Greek tragedy has become something of a tradition.[51] For
Charles Ludlam, rather than being detrimental to female subjectivity, drag
performance allows:
audiences to experience the universality of emotion, rather than believe that women
are one species and men another, and what one feels the other never does.[52]
In his Medea (1987), the eponymous role was originally performed by
himself and that of the Nurse by actor Everett Quinton. After Ludlams
death, Quinton and actress Black-eyed Susan alternated between the two
roles. These, and other, drag performances concerned themselves with the
problems inherent in identification with and representation of a gendered
identity. Whereas previously feminists such as Sue-Ellen Case wrote that

the representation of women by men in drag perpetuated negative female

stereotypes, binary opposition and suppressed the subjective experiences of
real women,[53] it could be argued that these often camp transvestite
theatrical performances allow for the collective exploration and deliberate
deconstruction of culturally-defined gender roles. To return to
Eichelbergers opening lines, also performed in drag, spit at the mirror
Medea/ the image you see will be yours, we see a woman speaking
through a man. Although, as Case (above) argued, this can be seen as an
example of the marginalisation of a truly female voice, it could also be
argued that the liminal gendering of the Medea character means that
identification with him/ her is not restricted to women. This can be seen to
demonstrate the concern expounded by Ludlam (above) to explore that
which is common between the sexes, transcendental of biological gender.
[54] However, the accusations Ninagawa faces above serves to demonstrate
the difficulties inherent in fighting against regulative discourses so
culturally ingrained; even attempted subversion can be seen as
perpetuation. Furthermore, although modern adaptations bring new
subjectivities and resistances to light, the problems of gendered identity, or
indeed any identity, can be seen in this appropriation of the feminine by a
man. The visual spectacle of the drag performer thus serves to reiterate the
fractured nature of a selfhood reliant on gender identification. Indeed, the
very nature of acting in itself requires the sustenance and presentation of an
identity at the expense of the actors own personal identity.[55]
To conclude, it has been demonstrated that the Medea of Euripides has
developed, with her most recent incarnation, that of the proto-feminist
eclipsing the sentimental abandoned wife as the womens movement has
developed. Yet perhaps the most important question is not how Medea has
been adopted by the womens movement, although that does form an
important part of the next question, but why. What is it that has made
audiences relate to Medea? Perhaps an answer can be taken from Rhodessa
Jones Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women where a group of
female prison inmates took part in a drama workshop at San Francisco
County jail and were asked to interpret the story of Jason and Medea in
relation to their own lives. This culminated in the 1992 Reality Is Just
Outside the Window: The Tragedy of Medea Jackson during the
performance of which Jones was quoted as saying:
Medea killed her children in revenge because she loved a man too much . . . As

women, all of us women, we all love too much.[56]

Here we see identification with a woman who committed an act out of love,
not hatred or evil. Yet the position of Medea as the most significant Greek
tragic heroine of recent times is nonetheless problematic. As Eichelbergers
Medea announces, spit at the mirror Medea/ the image you see will be
yours. It is this identification with the Medea character, this displacement
of internal and repressed aspects of actuality or selfhood such as Greers
dark secret side of motherhood, which makes this mirror image
simultaneously horrifying, fascinating and familiar. This Medea the
everywoman is, like every woman, every postmodern individual, a
fractured and fragmented being, combining love and hate, passivity and
agency. It is this idea of the fragmented nature of the self, the idea that there
is not one feminine voice or self but a plethora of voices and selves all
calling out for equal status, that has come to a head in most recent theatrical
productions. It is in this postmodern condition, a state where teleological
advancement towards perfection is doubted, where reason, analytical
method and conceptual knowledge are being ousted as primary values and
the sovereignty of the self is continually conflicted, questioned, redefined,
that tragedy has appeared. For tragedys, and particularly the Medeas,
ability to highlight this disparity between ideals and realities, the fact that
life and we are not as we should be[57], its amenability to change and flow,
is what has made it the most pervasive Greek drama of the past fifteen
years.