Medea and Claire Zachanassians Femininity in Medea and The Visit

Authors Avatar

Daniel Bregman                15 October 2009

Medea and Claire Zachanassian’s Femininity

in Medea and The Visit

Medea and The Visit are two plays characterised by strong female main characters. In this essay I will examine how Medea and Claire Zachanassian’s portrayals relate to the conception of femininity normal in their respective worlds, and the reasons for the ways they both conform and deviate from the type. I will begin by establishing what is meant by ‘feminine’ in each context, and then will move on to examining how each character does or does not fit certain aspects of this archetype, and will exploring the reasons for each.

Firstly, we must ascertain what the previously-mentioned ‘type’ for each setting is: what characteristics would be expected of a woman in each of the scenarios. I will begin with the Ancient Greek setting of Medea. My sources will be the text itself and external knowledge about the time period. The first thing that is clear is that Greek women had far fewer rights than those today. They could not vote, or stand for office, or make a case in the law courts. It is not clear that they were even permitted into theatres – Medea would have been played by a male actor in a mask. Women were considered in an important way to be objects possessed by a man: first their father, then at marriage their husband. Women would thus be dependent on their father or husband for support and legal authority. Women were not expected to be out of the ordinary in any way; the female ideal given by Pericles (Thucydides book ii) is to be “the least talked of among the men, whether for good or bad”.

In addition to this, we can gather what women are ‘supposed’ to be like from the behaviour and comments of the other females in the play: the nurse and chorus are the main examples of this. Finally we can gain insight through the comments made by male characters, such as Jason, into how women are regarded in relation to men. From these we can build up a better picture of the Greek conception of femininity that is behind Medea. In lines 546-549, Jason argues that women are driven by sex: “if your sex life goes wrong, all that was best and beautiful you make a battlefield”. In line 899, Medea (trying to trick Jason into believing she has had a change of heart) asserts that “woman is the weaker sex, and born to tears”. The chorus sing about how women should not think too deeply about life in lines 1051-1053: “Debates more deep than women should explore”. Overall the model of femininity that arises within Medea (and Greek theatre more generally) is of women who are dependent on their husbands or fathers, and emotionally fragile. Feminine women should not involve themselves in the affairs of men, nor question anything too deeply. Trickery is regarded as feminine attribute, to contrast with the masculine tackling an issue directly.

Join now!

In The Visit, Claire Zachanassian is by far the most prominent female character. Beyond her we have Ill’s wife, and a few village ladies who visit Ill’s shop. However, it is still possible to discern some aspects of what femininity means in the setting of Guellen. For instance, on page 44 Zachanassian is smoking a cigar on her balcony, which provokes disdain from some bystanders. As well as this we have the plain fact that there are very few female parts, and other than Zachanassian these are all minor. All the characters with jobs appear to be male: mayor, ...

This is a preview of the whole essay