women's life in greece
women in a man's world
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From Euripides, Medea 214 - 250 : No need to talk about me behind my back, ladies: I've come to face you. Some people are snobs, no doubt about it - some only in private, but often quite brazenly. But others are labelled stuck-up just because they keep themselves to themselves - it's so unfair. No one looks beyond the stereotype - they don't know you, but one look is enough for them to know they hate you. What did I ever do to them? A foreigner like me tries to fit in, obviously. Even the locals must make some effort to conform - I don't object to this. But deportation? This sentence comes out of the blue - I am shattered. My life is finished, sisters, - life without joy is living death. My husband was my life - he knows he was. He's proved himself the lowest man alive. Women would be better off as cattle, than as we are
- a subspecies of the human race. First - at great expense - we
buy ourselves a husband - what is a dowry unless a downpayment on
marriage? - but then he owns us, especially our bodies!
Thus two wrongs make a worse wrong. And secondly, the big question
- will the man we get be all right, or a total write-off? We can't
get rid of him, it's not respectable; we can't fight him off, it's
not possible. Someone like me, not trained up in your culture, a
stranger to your customs and traditions, needs magic powers to keep
a husband sweet in bed. And if our husband is not violent, and endures
the burden of marriage to us patiently - we are the envy of our
friends! If anything else - death would be a better fate. If a man
is bored by the company at home, he can go out and find a welcome
elsewhere. A woman has only one source of comfort. Men say we live
a life of ease at home all day, while they go off to war. They do
not understand. Personally I'd rather face the battleline three
times than go through childbirth once.
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