SAHNEDEKİ DELİ KADINLAR: EURİPİDES’İN MEDEA, HENRİK IBSEN’İN HEDDA GABLER VE EUGENE O’NEİLL’İN GÜNDEN GECEYE ADLI ESERLERİNDE KADIN DELİLİĞİ

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Throughout the history, women challenging their gender roles have mostly been labelled as hysterical, mad or dangerous by the patriarchal society. This long-seated tendency to associate women with insanity has also been echoed in drama. In that regard, this paper will explore the representation of nonconformist women who transgress the boundaries of imposed normality in Euripides’s Medea, Henric Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night. Financially dependent and restless with societal expectations, Medea, Hedda and Mary are tragic heroines of different eras resisting patriarchy that finally bring them on the verge of madness. After having sacrificed their aspirations or relative freedom for their marriages, those atypical female protagonists meet on a common ground in their repudiation of the dictated gender roles and motherhood image, which leads Medea to murder her own sons and Hedda to end her life while leaving Mary no choice than cutting off from reality through morphine.