The Roles of Women in the World of Men Theme Analysis

Euripides’s Iphigeneia at Aulis is set within the encampment of the Greek army at the port of Aulis. As the men await the shift in the winds that will allow their ships to sail to Troy, they establish a tent city that’s ruled and populated by men, in which women are vaguely missed but largely unwelcome. When Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, summons his daughter Iphigeneia and his wife Clytemnestra to join him there, the two women quickly realize that they’re out of their depth and that they are doomed to engage in a struggle for power which has been instigated, fought, and escalated by men; Iphigeneia and Clytemnestra’s roles are unjust, unfair, humiliating ones indeed. Ultimately, Euripides argues that Ancient Greece more broadly is a man’s world—and that within it, women are always relegated to stereotypes: the shrew, the whore, the sacrificial lamb, the jealous and demanding goddess. The specific story of Iphigeneia, Clytemnestra, and Agamemnon becomes an allegory for the ways in which women must embody these stereotypes to survive in the world of men that was the Classical Age—and, given the work’s endurance through the years, may yet still be the modern one.

As Euripides examines the unfair treatment of women within the realms of men—meaning both the specific setting of the play, the camp at Aulis, as well as the larger world of Ancient Greece—he suggests that in a man’s world, women will always be seen as embodiments of unfair stereotypes. Euripides does the work of untangling those stereotypes and imbuing his female characters with complication and nuance—even as he admits that art and society generally don’t do so. Clytemnestra is one of the major female roles in the play and she is a central figure in Greek drama. In Euripides’s contemporary and fellow tragedian Aeschylus’s cycle The Oresteia, Clytemnestra seeks vengeance against Agamemnon for his role in the events of Iphigeneia at Aulis—within this play, Euripides lays the groundwork for the transformation of a loyal wife and devoted mother into a murderous queen hell-bent on revenge. Clytemnestra is, in Iphigenia at Aulis, a proud mother and devoted wife who has come to love her husband in spite of the bloody roots of their marriage. Agamemnon slew Clytemnestra’s first husband and the child they had together before taking her forcefully to be his own bride—in spite of all of this, Clytemnestra declares, she has been a faithful wife who has borne him many children. Euripides shows Clytemnestra embodying the stereotype of a good, loyal wife in order to survive in a world ruled by men; her husband has already shown her his might and capacity for violence, and she knows that if she is to get by, she must succumb to his will.

“If it means that one man can see the sunlight / what are the lives of thousands of women in the balance?” Iphigeneia asks—completely unironically—as a mob of bloodthirsty men shout for her death and she at last offers herself up to be sacrificed in hopes of securing Greece’s victory against the Trojans. In this moment, Iphigeneia secures her place as a stereotype of a sacrificial virgin: a guileless cipher of a woman who wants nothing for herself and is unimpeachably good to her core. Of course, Iphigeneia’s “goodness” is filtered through the lens of living in a man’s world: her only desire is to help speed the ships of the men seeking glory for Greece. She regards her own life as useful only insofar as it might serve the men around her—even those, such as her father, who have betrayed her. Iphigeneia’s motivations are, by the end of the play, less about survival, since she knows that she must die—instead, her motivations seem to become rooted in a desire to secure glory for the very men whose bloodthirsty desire for victory has necessitated her sacrifice. Iphigeneia resigns herself to perpetuating the world of men as it is—she sees no other way for her people to prosper than by winning a war meant to declare one man’s power over his wife’s fate and desire. 

Even powerful goddesses like Artemis and Aphrodite are reduced to stereotypes. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and Artemis, the goddess of the moon and the hunt, have certain powers—but their influence on mortals is rooted in stereotypes about the agency available to women. Aphrodite, for instance, is charged with having “crazed / the whole Greek army with a passion to sail at once / to the barbarians’ own country.” In other words, while the god of war Ares is regarded as a legitimate source of bloody inspiration, Aphrodite’s influence on the men of Greece has left them “crazed.” Artemis, the goddess who controls the winds at the port of Aulis, has purportedly—according to the prophet Kalchas—demanded the sacrifice of Iphigeneia in exchange for reanimating the stalled sea winds and allowing the Greek army to sail for Troy. Artemis is known throughout classical myth as the protectress of virgins, yet she demands the sacrifice of one in exchange for allowing a group of men to get their way. These two major goddesses are portrayed in somewhat bad faith—as more tempestuous, unfair, and meddling than their male counterparts Ares and Zeus, who are spoken of reverently throughout the drama. While all of the Greek gods were known for their human-like propensity for folly, error, rage, and jealousy, Artemis and Aphrodite are here rendered as being just as fickle, persnickety, and demanding as all women are imagined to be by the men who alternately love and tolerate them, desire and reject them.

Euripides uses Iphigeneia at Aulis to examine the roles available to women in a man’s world—and to argue that in the male-dominated realm of the Trojan War, women existed in the male imagination only as adversaries or sacrifices, with almost no middle ground in between those two poles. By demonstrating Iphigeneia’s willingness to accept the role of sacrificial lamb—and foreshadowing Clytemnestra’s development as an adversary—Euripides shows how both women are forced to act as players in a game rigged against them, fighting for agency and autonomy in a world built to deny them their very humanity by slotting them into simplistic, predetermined roles.