Medea
Life was hard for women in Greece (or Corinth) as Medea notes in her 1st speech, when she calls upon the "white wolf of lightning to leap" and "burst" her and "cling to these breasts" like a baby. What is she saying? She wants to feed the wild forces of nature. This indicates that there is a great surge of power and rage in Medea -- and the reason, of course, is that her husband is casting her off. "Justice on earth is a name, not a fact," she says to the women who surround her. She has sacrificed all for Jason and now she is thrown aside as though she were worthless: this is the source of her complexity of feeling, which ranges from wrath to sorrow. From this speech, we can learn that life was not easy for women in Greece.
For foreigners it was no easier -- and this makes it doubly hard for Medea. When Creon comes in, following her speech, to announce that she is to be banished (for no good reason other than that Jason has decided to leave her), it is like rubbing salt in the wound. She left her home to go with Jason to his and yet he has kicked her out of his home so that he can start a new one with a new, fresh young-faced girl. For a foreigner in Greece, the world was not one's friend: it was a cold, inhumane world that placed all things Greek above all else, without regard for the thoughts or feelings of those whose ways were not Grecian ways. Being a foreigner, and thus despised by the Greeks...
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
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