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Medea: A Woman Scorned
Only an extraordinary woman is capable of killing her own children, whether to save them from something worse or not. Euripides confronts ancient Greece with a woman who is exceptionally intelligent. And also angry because her husband has unfairly left her for a younger, more beautiful woman who can help him get ahead and "gain wealth and power" for himself and his sons. She helped him get the Golden Fleece, left her own country and family for his, killed her own brother in order to save him when they were on the ship, and bore him two sons. After all Medea has done for him, Jason reveals himself as weak and rather stupid, really, when he fails to appreciate Medea's sacrifices and the depth of her loyalty and passion for him. Her feelings about his abandonment begin with grief and suicidal thoughts: "That lightening from heaven would split my head open. Oh, what use have I now for life? I would find my release in death and leave hateful existence behind me" (747) and progress to murderous fury and rage. The saying "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" certainly applies to Medea. As the children's nurse describes...
now there's hatred everywhere. Love is diseased" (744).
Because Medea lives in a culture where women have no rights, she cannot fight back openly. Instead, she has to scheme. The nurse describes her nature as full of "wildness," with a "bitter nature," and "proud hearted." Feminists might point out that she is the kind of woman most endangered in a patriarchal society where women are required to be compliant, soft-spoken, and long-suffering. Later on, women like Medea, who can't accept subservient roles, will be confined in mental institutions. The nurse implies that "greatness" has done no good to Medea, a princess and sorceress, who has not learned to be humble or moderate. Medea is disillusioned. She believed her marriage to Jason would be forever. She says, "It was everything to me to think well of one man, and he, my own husband, has turned out wholly vile" (749). She goes on to say that women are the "most unfortunate creatures" because they must pay for a husband and "take for our bodies a master; for not to take one is even worse" (750). She cannot escape from him. When a man gets bored with his…
Bibliography
Euripides. "Media." The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed. Bernard M.W. Knox.
New York W.W. Norton & Company, 1985, 743-777.
Medea relates a story about the power of love, which induces sacrifice as well as jealousy and feelings of revenge aroused by betrayal. Medea, the principal character, is a woman, who is so smitten by her love for Jason that she forsakes her family, country and people to live in "...the land of Corinth with her husband and children, where her exile found favour with the citizens to whose land
Medea Villianness, Victim, or Both? Medea has emerged from ancient myth to become an archetype of the scorned woman who kills her own children to spite her husband, who must then suffer the fate of outliving them. The story itself is horrific, and yet it remains strangely fascinating, and into the mouth of its maniacal heroine many writers have given philosophies which were too subversive to be voiced in open discourse. Many
Medea also uses her children by having them deliver poison in the disguise of gifts, as no one would expect the children to have ill intentions. The children present the gifts as a request to let them avoid banishment, but in reality the gifts have been sent not to aid the children's situation at all. Throughout the play Medea acts like a puppet-master using the children to get her
This double standard is prominent in Medea, for example when Jason admits that it is normal for women to get very angry when their husband is being unfaithful, yet he expects Medea to forget about it. (Euripides, ln 908-910) This is yet another way in which Medea parallels the position of women in our society today who are also expected to keep their feelings hidden. Medea has an inclination towards
Freudian theory believes that extreme suffering removes own from the tamed state which each individual resides within civilization, "Just as satisfaction of instinct spells happiness for us, so severe suffering caused us if the external world lets us starve, if it refuses to state our needs," (Freud 28). Medea is so affected by her suffering that she removes herself from everyday life, "She lies without food and gives herself
"As a female foreigner whose relationship with Jason was only formalized with the birth of the children, Medea would have been viewed as an irregular companion, and after Jason's betrothal to Glauce, she would be reduced to the status of concubine." (Guastella in Claus) This makes them a helpful tool in securing her bond to Jason. Another means by which they can be useful props for Medea is when she