Medea

I honestly liked Medea a lot. Reading the play, it felt more realistic and it definitely felt more modern. It was a departure from the other Greek tragedies we've read in that the play is focused on a scorned woman who successfully gets her revenge. Also, the chorus is all female, which was not the norm for these types of plays. The chorus was really involved in this play. They kept taking Medea's side and didn't do anything when she was murdering her children. Normally the chorus is only a narrative voice, someone for the characters to talk to when they need to say something, and a descriptive voice for the scenes that take place off stage. The chorus didn't even provide the narrative voice for one of the most important scenes, in which Medea's poisoned dress and coronet kill the princess and her father. I actually like the chorus better in this play because they're not just standing around impassively.
Both the chorus and the central character, Medea, talk about what it means to be a woman and how it feels. This is different from all the other tragedies in that it seems they're bringing up social issues, whereas normally the tragedies only deal with actions and consequences and fate. I can see why this could be considered to have a feminist voice, since Medea does lament the fate of women in Greek society. Also, the fact that she is a woman who atypically does not have a maternal instinct strong enough to even try to save her childrens' lives is unusual. She murders her own children and gets away with it. The fact that she gets away with it flies in the face of every other tragedy of the time. One of the main reasons why the tragedies were written was to be didactic. Each play sent a message; in Oedipus, it was "don't try to avoid your fate", in Clytemnestra it was dealing with the consequences of your actions, specifically murder. The only role Medea seems to fill is to be cathartic. There are plenty of characters to feel pity for here, especially the children, who are completely innocent.