Bachelor of Arts, University of Toledo, 2012, English

During the mid to late Victorian period, Euripides' tale of Medea was given new life by the suffragette movement. As Victorians began to question women's rights and capabilities, Medea's story resurfaced as a cautionary tale showing the damage that occurs when women repress and shape their identities to fit uncompromising social expectations for their gender. In this thesis, I examine two Victorian women poets who interpreted Medea as a feminist statement: Augusta Webster, whose “Medea in Athens” (1870) was featured as the lead dramatic monologue in her collection Portraits, and Amy Levy whose closet drama “Medea: A Dramatic Fragment” (1881) was published as a part of her collection A Minor Poet and Other Verse. Both these writers examine Medea's psychology and the context in which she lives. Through their use of poetic conventions, Webster and Levy are able to suggest ways in which Medea's autonomy and identity are co-opted by a patriarchal society. I argue that Webster uses the tactics of the dramatic monologue to explore Medea's disintegrated sense of self, depicting her as a woman whose identity has been usurped by her husband's view of her. Levy appropriates the techniques of closet drama to focus on the voice of a patriarchal culture that excludes Medea long before her act of filicide. Through close readings of these two poems, I show the cultural impact and relevancy of Webster and Levy as female voices in the Victorian literary tradition.

Committee: Melissa Valiska Gregory PhD (Advisor); Matthew Wikander PhD (Committee Chair); Christina Fitzgerald PhD (Committee Chair) Subjects: Comparative Literature; Gender; Womens Studies