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Medea does not so much get help from outside as she makes her own aid, supernaturally. She uses magic to prepare the poisonous dress. She also uses magic to foretell a cure for Aegeus, so as to procure his promise of shelter when all is done. The crossing of the threshold is accomplished as she manages to convince Jason to take her two children and their poisonous gift into the inner sanctum of his new home. That her own husband should serve as the threshold guardian begins to portray the subtle way in which what (up until now) might look like a monomyth is about to take a gruesome turn away from anything which might be conceived as heroic. So the children, and with them symbolically Medea herself, enter into the very belly of the whale where they will confront Jason and his new wife. The first phase of the hero myth has proceeded rather traditionally, perhaps, if with a strange focus as the hero has not yet precisely left the city, and is remaining instead to take revenge on all those who sent her forth. This "rejection of the quest," is a little out of hand, one might say, as it seems to have transformed into the quest itself. However, it is the second phase, not the first, that really highlights...
Medea experiences the road of trials in her mind as she imagines her children walking into the castle to give her murderous gifts to Jason's bride. Now she struggles with her own doubts and feelings of empathy towards her children. In this stage, she must overcome her impulses to do good and harden her heart so as to murder her own children when they return to her. "Jason['s]... insistence on crediting Eros for the fact that Medea saved his life lets his nemesis know that sensuality and desire are her own worst enemies, that she has them to blame for her humilation and defeat. Thanks to him, she is persuaded that her own life affirming impulses have caused her humiliation and defeat." (Corti, 41)
Here the irony strikes in full force. The road of trials is where most heroes must struggle against their inner death-impulses and learn to embrace
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