- It is her willingness to sacrifice things dearest to her for that one perfect revenge on Jason.
- Murder of Children
- One could say that the murder of the children ( possibly one of the acts that makes us question her and turns the readers opinion of her around) is to protect them from the counter revenge of her enemies “No one shall take my children from me” “ I’ll not leave sons of mine to be the victims of my enemies rage” and to fulfill her personal revenge on Jason
“ You murdered them?…Yes, Jason, to break your heart”
“Killed my sons? That word kills me”
- Possibly what makes this act so repellent and unbelievable in the eyes of a modern audience is this bond that is supposed to exist between a mother and her children. However, this bond still exists between Medea and her sons making their death even more poignant.
“Parted from you my life will be all pain and anguish”
“before I have has my joy of you, before I have seen you growing up, becoming prosperous”
“my pain is more than I can bear”
“ What makes me cry with pain is the next thing I have to do. I will kill my sons,”
- Even the chorus and nurse have mixed feelings concerning Medea as they watch her actions with a mix of horror and excitement.
“Look down on the accursed woman before she lifts up a murderous hand to pollute it with her children’s blood”
Nurse: “ A frightening woman”
- Does Medea’s greatness and pride draw us to her or do we find her arrogant and repellent as a result?
- In Greek society there was a fascination with the thin line between greatness and humility. All through their literature we see that there are the same traits which can make a man or woman ‘great’ also lead to enormous pain and suffering on their part and eventually their downfall.
- Medea possesses some of the traits of a great heroine but Euripides has twisted them so that they are not perfect. Medea’s heroic quality is marred by her extremes.
- These extremes do make the audience find her repellent at times. For instance after she has sent the poison to kill Glauce.
“ You’ll give me double pleasure if their death was horrible”
- Medea’s intellect and self absorption are very evident and make us respect her even if just a little bit from the very beginning. However, these same traits make her into a monster as we see them being used for evil, extreme purposes.
- Pride is also used in this same way. We feel some pity for this proud woman who has been hurt so deeply by the egotistical Jason, but this pride also drives her to unnecessary brutality that the audience cannot comprehend.
- It adds a repellent sense of waste, of not only talent but also life.
-children’s lives, Glauce, Creon, etc
- Does the fact that Medea is an unaccepted outsider make us feel sympathetic towards her or do we find her even more repellent because of it?
- The nurse reminds us from the start that Medea is a foreigner, this makes us at least the slightest bit sympathetic to her.
“ her lovely head, speaks to herself alone, and wails aloud for her dear father, her own land and home”
“She learns through pain what blessings they enjoy who are not uprooted from their native land.”
- The Greeks gave certain traits to ‘outsiders’ or ‘barbarians’ these would have been evident in Medea and would have made her repellent for the Greek audience.
- For the Greeks, exile was seen as a fate worse than death. This is difficult for a modern audience to grasp and would have added to her repellent qualities at the time.
Medea’s cleverness and intellect are beyond a doubt of a greater quality than many of her counter parts. These talents that should have made her popular only made her more repellent to the Greek audience… Aristotle describes why when he says the “ unscrupulously clever woman so distasteful as to be a subject unfit for drama.” The people around her, while not as clever and talented as Medea, have what she lacks in their social power and respect.
“ Hers is the damaged and distorted pride of a woman, condescended to for her sex and her barbarian origin, who is nonetheless superior to everyone around her. After all she has suffered, in some ways Medea is most infuriated when she is ridiculed by fools.”
