Medea Response
Medea by Euripides is a theatrical adaptation of the myth of Jason and Medea from Greek Mythology. The drama, a tragedy, is primarily about revenge and a woman’s scorn – Medea’s swears revenge against her husband, Jason, who has left her and their two boys for another woman, the daughter of Creon, the King of Corinth (the city where the play is set in). Every action, dialogue, and motive that the character of Medea is made to do, say, and have respectively, serves the character’s primary objective – to make Jason sadder than what she, to make him lose more than what she has and to make him realise that, with her, he had everything and it is only because of himself that he has lost al of that.
At the very outset, the drama clearly establishes itself as a ‘tragedy’ in the way it arranges its premise – Jason’s life at the start seems to be going very well – he is about to marry the daughter of the King of Corinth, gaining power by becoming a friend to Creon, and to have both his sons after Medea is exiled from Corinth – but as the plot progresses, he is left distraught by misfortune at the end – his new wife is burnt to ashes as she wears the cursed gold dress sent by Medea, Creon dies with his daughter trying to save her, and both his sons are killed by Medea. Even though, Medea defies the norms of a tragedy by letting the protagonist, in this case, Medea live, the end paints a gory demise to her character as she leaves on her chariot. By being a mother who has killed her own children for revenge, I think the end that Medea is given by Euripedes is worse than her being given death.
The drama is very prophetical as Medea is seen outlining the ways in which she wants to take her revenge, always hinting at her ‘ulterior’ motives in front of other characters before she covers them up. In the first scene, with Creon, while she begs him to let her stay a day, she mutters to herself that he might dead in a few hours when he is seen asking himself what “evil” she could do if she is left “for a few hours.” Even in other instances, where she asks Aegeus, the King of Athens who guarantees her refuge in return for her curing his sterility, if he felt that “taking away someone’s children” would be the most painful punishment for someone. Later, she also poses a hypothetical situation to Jason, where she asks what would happen if someone kill their sons when they would be under their protection.
I thought that the tone used throughout the narrative can be credited to Euripides’ unabashed writing style, which is characteristic of blunt honesty and him being unafraid to voice his specific opinions, which could cause controversy. The portrayal of Medea’s “witch-like” hysteria as she is made to show crave nothing more than her husband’s fall and suffering, Creon’s pride, Jason’s arrogance and selfishness and the nurse’s agony as she sees Medea, who she has raised as her own child, driven to kill hew own two children, all necessarily needed particular lines and rhetoric to garner their appeal.
Medea can be considered amongst the first of its kind, feminist dramas as it shows a woman protagonist standing up for her believes and succeeding in her motives, no matter how twisted they were. I thought the presence of the “women of Corinth” on stage as different things unfolded was extremely interesting and became a theatrical juxtaposition, which let the audience judge Medea’s womanliness compared to the notion of femininity they were made to project. Throughout the play, they kept on comparing Medea to a witch – a woman who has lost her sense to reason – and pitied her. This was a direct way in which Euripedes showed how absurd it seemed for a woman to assume that she has a right to seek revenge. Even though, these women persuaded Medea till the end to spare her children as no mother was capable of doing so, but, in the end, they were almost sympathetic to Medea’s condition when Jason asked them why Medea would kill their children. They told him that it was his fault and the things that happened would not have happened if he would not have discarded the faith, which was his marriage to Medea.Even though, Medea’s overall character is prone and threatened by misogynistic readings, it was very enriching for me to have watched this play, which explored the idea of feminism within the grave, convoluted ethical dilemma that it poses.