Euripides and Chopin, in their respective works Medea and The Awakening, present main characters who, because of their roles as females (and as a foreigner in Medea's case), are expected by society to fill certain positions. Medea and Edna both eventually eschew the confined rigors of their societies, and they shun traditional gender roles. Each goes to drastic lengths to remedy her seemingly dire situation, and each does things thought by society to be achievable only at the hands of men.
Jason personally betrays Medea, a woman who left her homeland, killed her own kin, and bore and mothered boys for the callous Greek. In Medea's time, especially in Greece, women were expected to be solely maternal figures capable of little strength or rational cerebration; they were basically passive, reactive servants to their husbands. Common perception of women was that they were, as Aristotle put it, no better than slaves. Through Euripides's play, however, Medea proves to be the purest antithesis of these qualities. She does not accept Jason's actions submissively; she resolves to exact revenge.
Grecian society isolates Medea for two simple reasons: she is a woman exhibiting stereotypical male qualities, and she is not a Greek. She reflects, "And when you're a foreigner: "Be like us," they say. Even Greeks look down on other Greeks, too clever to see the good in them." This attitude of Greece towards her as a foreigner also functions as a contributing factor in building her hate towards Jason. Jason tries to rationalize his actions in abandoning Medea: "You have had from me more than you gave," Jason explains to Medea, "I have brought you from a barbarous land to Greece, and in Greece you are esteemed for your wisdom." But Medea's treatment in Greece is quite the opposite.
In Medea's acts of vengeance (killing Jason's lover as well as his children) she presents herself as the most iconoclast of women.
