'Of all creatures that have life and will, we women are the most wretched' - A Review of Euripides' 'Medea'
- denismorine
- Oct 31, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 22, 2024
Medea ranks among the most infamous mortal women in Greek mythology, up there with the likes of the sorceress Circe, the husband-slayer Clytemnestra, and, of course, the woman who sent a thousand ships, the all-beautiful Helen of Sparta (or Troy, whatever suits your fancy).
Is Medea's notoriety deserved though? Is she pure evil, or simply misunderstood?
The quintessential depiction of Medea to most is Euripides' eponymous play, 'Medea', which takes place some time following the Argonautical adventure for the Golden Fleece. Jason and Medea, the great Greek/barbarian situationship, have both settled in Hellas, more precisely Corinth, beset by (what could be called) considerable domestic upset.
The crux of the tragic narrative is that Jason, on arriving back on mainland Greece, has promptly married into the Corinthian royal family, eloping with the princess daughter of King Creon. Jason justifies this under the pretence of accumulating wealth for the betterment of his own quality of life and that of Medea and their children's - this is, however, reasonably suspect. Medea, already having had children by Jason, feeling both betrayed and indignant at this slight against their love, begins to ideate Jason's annihilation and, by extension, his new wife's and, more disconcertingly, her own children's. Events come to a head when Creon forces Medea into exile, fearing this exact possibility, but tragically, out of pity, allows Medea but one day to prepare her travel plans; this is all the time it takes for Medea to orchestrate her murder-spree...
Medea, it might seem from this explanation of the plot, is an irredeemable, sadistic, psychopathic murderer. Indeed, that is probably an apt description of her, but it misses out on the greater nuance of her character. Medea is, at heart, not simply a woman spurned, but an immigrant abandoned (seduced toward unknown shores, feared and shunned by them, and ultimately cast aside by supposed civilised society). In many senses, Medea stands for the prototypical 'Other', unable, by nature, to enter into the secure limelight of the 'Self', instead relegated out of fear for her witch-like foul magicks, and her non-Greek, 'barbarian' heritage (she would never be recognised as Jason's true wife - such is one of Jason's motivations for marrying the princess). While Jason claims that one of the favours he has done Medea is bringing her to civilised Hellas, he has, rathermore, ruinously displaced her from her homeland, Colchis, on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, where she once lived as a princess herself - there, she was at least ethnically accepted, if not looked up to. Jason, (essentially) wilfully blind to the plight of the minority, sets up his own demise; it is his flaw, his hubris that costs him, his wife, and his children, designing the tragedy at hand.
That is, however, not to say that Medea's crimes are commensurate with Jason's condemnable behaviour; the play is not necessarily about moral high grounds. As Medea effectively admits, in heartbreaking melancholy before slaughtering her own children, her wickedness is an all-in gambit to make Jason despair, to regret his choices, to recognise her suffering. Medea is certainly evil: she plots, she gloats, she deceives, she partakes in some over-the-top schadenfreude, and she brazenly kills innocents, but, after all, she is broken and lost. Alongside that, she is a member of that ill-fated, wretched tribe: womankind. Her murderous ideation and subsequent follow-through can accurately be ascribed as a fulfilled power-fantasy for a heroic minority, something not to be repeated in reality by any means, but potentially envisioned by the scorned lessers of a certain society. Although, within the classical sphere, Medea came to be seen as a reprehensible harlot and sufferer of proposed hysteric sex-jealousy, she is herself a tragic heroine, whether heroic or not.
It is unclear what Euripides' intent, if any, was with Medea. Most Athenian tragedies delineate some sort of moral sentiment, and it seems that, beyond all things, Euripides means to usher his audiences into, if not sympathising, then beginning to comprehend Medea's position, entering into the barbarian's perhaps quite alien shoes as it were. Medea, like most premises of tragedies, was well-known to its onlookers before the curtain-rise, but Euripides portrays the villain all-too-complexly for his message to be to deride her character entirely. Considering we do not have the answers, and most likely never will (and even then, literature ought to be what you make of it), it is up to the audience and reader of the play to determine if we are to feel sympathy for Medea, or if she is truly too cold-blooded to deserve an ounce of commiseration.
It is a right shame that Ovid is supposed to have written his own Medea play which is now lost (although he graciously left behind a Medea in his 'Heroides'), but Euripides' Medea is profound enough that we will not run out of food for thought and interpretation any time soon.
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