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Medea and Romeo and Juliet
Violence in a Literary Context
There have always been different representations of violence within classical literature. Euripides' Medea and William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet both show unique images of past culture's violence acceptance and widespread use of it within their cultural mores. Euripides aims to shock his audience with the murder of Medea's own children; however, he gives her sympathy and allows Medea to justify herself based on the amount of pain and violence she herself had to endure. Shakespeare uses an outrageous militia-like system of home justice used by both major families to show how the ideology of violence begetting violence can have serious consequences on those we love.
Medea, in Euripides' play, had to suffer banishment and betrayal. In turn she redirected the violence bestowed upon her unto her children, which she murdered both to protect them from a life of misery as well as to spite her treacherous husband Jason. It was perfectly dignified in their culture for Jason to violently betray Medea, but when she is the instrument of violence, the audience is shocked. Although Euripides does sympathize with her, Medea still is left to the fate of the mother who murdered her children. This familial violence represents the violence of the culture on a larger scale. Euripides wants to shock the audience in order to show that violence should not be acceptable in any form what so ever.
Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet also has an anti-violence message. The unlawful fighting and murdering which happens between the city's largest and most powerful families leads to the death of the innocent Romeo and Juliet. The death of the young lovers aims to show the audience that a universal ideology of unchecked violence can only lead to more pain and suffering. However, through Romeo and Juliet's death, the violence within the context of the play is curbed. Both families come to see the error of their ways, despite this realization being much too late to save their children. At the end, the play makes it clear that violence is in now way morally acceptable, despite many melodramatists attempt to make it so in modern cinema history. Violence always breeds more violence.
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