Throughout the play, Medea is a varied character who attains numerous characteristics compared to women of his times. She, therefore, received different treatment from the society. Why was she a different being? One, Medea was obsessed with supernatural powers, a trait that made her so unique and distinct. Nonetheless, she was unscrupulous, spiteful, and compelled with retaliation. Because of the daily encounters in her life experiences, the situations that arose could have been thought to have played a critical role in shaping certain characteristics and actions by Medea. Most people were scared of her, including the males in the society. Therefore, she had not experienced what love is after meeting Jason.
The experience of love made her willing to participate in any activities that assured to protect her blossoming love with Jason. From the play, we come into contact with her courage and vindictive nature when she kills the beast shielding Golden Fleece to safeguard their love. Medea also left her home despite opposition from the family to go and look for Jason. During that time, most women would have given up and avoided going to such extents. Because of her courageous and bold nature, Medea is a spectacular character during the course of the play.
Medea is commonly known as the barbarian princess and a wizard who is adapted to a unique way of life in comparison to other humans. As a barbarian princess, Medea is naïve and much uncivilized. She does not believe in a westernized way of life. On the other hand, Jason, her husband, is a Greek with a deep knowledge and understanding of law, practical calculation, and rationality. Consequently, the two characters are indifferent to everything they participates in. Media is made to appear a passionate creature even though we can all agree that this is just a surface appearance. Deep inside, she is someone else. Throughout the play, Euripides reveals the inner personalities of Medea, and we discover the unwavering honesty depicted in the entire play.
Medea is a passionate woman who is ready to sacrifice anything to express love or hate towards Jason. She is highly committed to her husband, and this makes Jason the object of Medea’s emotional life. Because of the deep love of Medea to Jason, she never hesitated to murder her brother in the name of love. She even went ahead to betray her father together with the country of origin. We should also not forget that Medea initiated the death of Pelias because she wanted to defend Jason at all costs. Medea is correspondingly unprincipled in her hatred. As the events of the play unfold, we learn that Medea is a vengeful woman with plans to destroy Jason’s enemies. As the play commences, Medea steps on the stage and a when they play a chorus of the sympathetic woman, it appears that everyone had wronged her. The situation makes the audience pity her. However, as the plays come to an end, we discover that Medea is a cold-hearted person and a murderer. She actually killed four people including her sons. As a result, Jason life is full of misery because of the heinous acts of Medea.
Papadopoulou (645) affirms that Medea participates in taciturnly well-orchestrated murders, and she feels no remorse at all. She coldly arranges the murders in an inhuman manner, and this inspires fear and anxiety in the entire play. For instance, she disguises herself and starts taking care of Creon so that she could afford ample time to slay him together with his daughter, Glauce. It is also shocking that she once planned to murder Jason but later changed her mind. After observing how the state of childless made Aegeus heartsick, Medea decided to reduce Jason to a state of childlessness, wifeless, and companionless. She is so evil to the extent of faking a reunion with Jason to murder Creon and Glauce in an abhorrent way. At first, she is undecided and not ready to slay her sons because of momentary tenderness. Within no time, she exterminates them without sympathy. It is depicted that she is the queen of black magic, and a hard-hearted assassin. As a matter of fact, Medea is an absolute murderer. It is ironical that the audience understands her despite the atrocious acts.
The urge and the desire of Medea transform her into two personalities: the subhuman, and the superhuman. The play writer allows Medea to vanish in a dragon-drawn chariot over the air. The audience, therefore, understands the protagonist is a component of raw nature: destructive, ferocious, fierce, and cold-heartedly powerful, amongst others immoral standards (Most 28). Medea is the reason that Jason becomes intertwined with a formidable and unknown force that lowers his self-worth and impartiality. Jason’s previous successes are ruined to unimaginable extents. As the play culminates, his character has been reshaped to that of Medea. Jason and Medea are affected by grief and sorrow because they do not have mates or kids. Death had robbed them. The former lovers are absolutely empty inside, and Jason had adopted a personality influenced by animosity and vengeance, just like that of Medea.
Boedeker (95) asserts, “We are accustomed to think of Media, in Euripides’ tragedy as in other representations of her myth, as a passionately rejected wife, motivated by jealous hatred to commit crime that exceeds even the wrong that has been done to her.” Unquestionably, Jason had had become disloyal on their marriage, and this element made the play revolved around the issues of gender and family (ibid). The issues presented in the tragedy surpass sexual differences and domestic conflicts. To understand the events in the tragedy, we should play close attention to how events unfold. Is Medea right to blame Jason of her woes? Is it fair for the husband to marry another woman and abandon Medea? Such questions make us pinpoint the slight reference to jealousy, or even less to love gone wrong. In reference to Bernard Knox and other critics, Medea reacts to the betrayal of her husband “ with a heroic temper, in the manner of an injured Achilles or Ajax, conscious above all of the dishonor she has suffered” (Boedeker 95). Jason should also be blamed because of his intentions to have a new wife, a motive that makes Medea feels betrayed and offended.
Mackay and Allan (61) contends, “the reproductive task [which] can be broken into two stages and two kinds of problem: finding the right mare and raising offspring to maturity.” The two factors are what models the Medea’s story. Nonetheless, the decision of Medea to participate in numerous murderous acts, particularly of her own children, leaves the audience perplexed (Most 321). It is confusing whether nature allowed sympathy for a wronged woman even after engaging in atrocious acts. Medea went against the odds of the role of women in the Greek society and always aimed to attain the best. In comparison to others, Women in the Greek society suffered from the lack of self-determination over their marital status (Mackay and Allan 62).
Medea could have engaged in violent disinvestment in her children because she was no longer associated with her family and kin. There is a high chance if Medea kept close contacts with her family, she could not have been abused in her marriage. It is clear that Greek marriages remained patriarchal and patrilocal, and the family of the married woman was allowed to engage in a misunderstanding arising from marriage. This point is supported by Medea sentiments as she articulates (255-8),
I, without relatives or city, am suffering outrage
Having no mother, no brother, no kinsman
The elucidation above demonstrates a passionate woman who goes against all odds to obtain the love of her life. Medea did not believe in the traditional set-up where women rarely made decisions that affected their daily lives. She disregards the patriarchal system that expected women to remain submissive to men. She was too focused to safeguard her marriage with Jason, and this prompted her to engage in vengeful antics to preserve her marriage. The tragedy by Euripides is a masterpiece!
Work cited
Boedeker, Deborah. "Euripides' Medea and the Vanity of ΛΟΓΟΙ." Classical Philology 86.2 (1991): 95-112.
Mackay, Maria, and Arlene L. Allan. "Filicide in Euripides' Medea: A Biopoetic Approach." Helios 41.1 (2014): 59-86.
Most, Glenn W. "Two Problems in the Third Stasimon of Euripides' Medea." Classical Philology 94.1 (1999): 20-35.
Papadopoulou, Thalia. "The presentation of the inner self: Euripides’ Medea 1021–55 and Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica 3, 772–801." Mnemosyne 50.5 (1997): 641-664.
