“Vi är sådana som vi är”. Hur kvinnor i fyra euripideiska dramer beskriver sig själva och sin tillvaro.

Abstract

This study took its starting-point in a remark made by the scholar Donald J Mastronarde, who points out how Euripides differ from other dramatists of his age by letting female characters analyze, criticize and generalize. Based on this remark, the assumption was made that female characters in Euripides plays would be able to perform universal statements about women and women's living-conditions. To investigate if this assumption is true, and if so, what women it is that perform these statements, and the content of them, this study was carried out. With the help of two methods from the branch of exegetics, this study closely investigates all lines spoken by women in the four oldest surviving plays of Euripides: Alcestis, Medea, Heraclidae and Hippolytos. With the help of commentaries and other studies all lines where women are expressing universal statements concerning women and womenʼs livingconditions were closely analyzed. The result of this study shows that the assumption concerning womenʼs ability to perform universal statements about themselves and their lives are correct. Moreover, this study shows that all four plays here studied contain female characters performing this sort of statements, that these characters represent different “types” of women (such as nurses, choirs and named women) but that named women are the type most often occurring, and that in sum 80% of the female characters utter universal statements concerning women and their living-conditions. This study also shows how these statements can be divided into four subgroups, based on if they describe womenʼs character, how womenʼs behaviour is, how womenʼs behaviour should be, and womens living-conditions. This study also shows that almost all statements describe women and their living-conditions negatively, and that all statements either describe women connected to their home and role as wife and mother, or describe them in a way that displays them as unfit for (full) participation in and the governing of society. This study also shows, last but not least, that Euripides enables women in his plays to perform universal utterances concerning women and the conditions under which they live. This, combined with what we already know through earlier research, seems to indicate that in the plays of Euripides there is a will to display how society looks upon and treats women and, a wish to challenge those things that limit the life of women.