‘Her eye like a wild bull’s’ this line shows that the Nurse is a shrewd judge of Medea’s character, a better understanding than Jason will ever show in the play. The Nurse recognises the fact that Medea is a threat to her two children and that as a royal (her father was the king of Colchis) she has the mind of a queen and is used to giving demands and should not be crossed.
The main themes of the play are set out in the very beginning: 1) Medea’s passionate nature and her history and capacity for violence. 2) Her weak status as a woman and as a foreigner, who has no hope of help from the law or her family. 3) Jason’s opportunistic attitude to marriage as a practical convenience to help him to gain his ambitions. Also at the beginning, the Chorus, Tutor and Nurse all sympathise with Medea and disapprove of Jason.
We see Medea’s capability of manipulating others in her entrance speech. She appears self controlled despite the off-stage wailing and announces, like a Homeric hero, her intention of wreaking revenge upon Jason and asks the female Chorus not to betray her if she finds a way of taking her revenge. Medea also challenges the very basis of ancient Greek society mores of male superiority by saying that she would rather ‘stand three times in the front line than bear one child,’ this is in answer to the fact that men go out and fight battles while women are safe at home. The male audience would have found this very shocking.
Medea understands Creon’s love of his daughter Glauce, Jason’s new wife, and manipulates him as a parent. She kneels to him as though she were a suppliant and begs for one day to make arrangements after he says that he wishes to banish her from his kingdom; after all, she had been cursing his house after Glauce and Jason were married. Creon allows her this day; this shows that he has underestimated her greatly. After Creon leaves, she plots to kill Jason, Glauce and Creon.
The Chorus then go on to say that Apollo, god of poetry, has only given poetic inspiration to men and not to women and that men have abused women in their poetry by making them seem unfaithful. Now however, a scandal centring on a man, Jason has emerged and now poetry and literature will change, as a man has been shown as treacherous.
When Jason enters and the first confrontation in the play between him and Medea, Jason is shown as a self-satisfied, arrogant man whose only ambition is the throne of Corinth. He is patronising toward Medea by claiming that he is marrying Glauce because he wants to give Medea and the children royal connections and that he will not see them banished with ‘an empty purse, or unprovided’. Medea responds to this by calling Jason a ‘filthy coward’. This is because she had given up everything for Jason and he owes his very fame to her as she helped him get the fleece, escape from Colchis and killed his evil uncle and bore him two sons. However, Jason believes that he can ‘ride-out’ as though he were on one of his ships, the rage of Medea. It is as though he is living in the past. Jason also claims that he owes the retrieval of the Golden Fleece to Aphrodite as it was she who prompted Medea’s passion for Jason, he also says that Medea should be grateful to him for bringing her to civilised Greece away from barbarian Colchis. Jason shows that he is a misogynist by saying ‘ if women didn’t exist, human life would be rid of all its miseries’. He also believes that Medea is simply sexually jealous of his and Glauce’s relationship.
Medea refuses the help that Jason had offered and Jason leaves asking for the gods to bear witness that he has done everything that he could have possibly done for Medea and the children. Euripides has switched the roles of the hero. He has made Medea have very Homeric hero qualities such as pride and the want to keep a revered reputation. Medea prizes her reputation above her own life. However, Jason is shown to be opportunistic and shallow and a much weaker character than Medea. This would have infuriated the Greek audience.
Medea then manipulates King Aegeus of Athens. She promises him fertility and a son if he was to help her. She makes him swear an oath and also begs at his knees for sanctuary in civilised Athens. This would have very much angered the Greek audience as Athens was seen as the most civilised of all the Greek citadels and to see the king of the great place, the father of the hero Theseus, no less, giving sanctuary to a murderess, a barbarian and a challenger of Greek society’s mores must have been a great insult. After this meeting, Medea plots to kill the children rather than Jason as Aegeus says that a man’s sons are incredibly important to him as they carry on his line and keep his memory alive. The Chorus now lose all sympathy with Medea as they can see that she has filicidal tendencies.
The next meeting Medea has is with Jason where she shows his stupidity and arrogance and her ability to mock him with bitter sarcasm without him seeing it. She apologises for the things that she had said and says that she should have got his marriage bed ready for him and Glauce.
Medea cries twice in this scene. The first is when the children hold out their arms to her and the second is when Jason wants to see them grow big and strong to lead armies. This is dramatic irony, as the Chorus, Medea and the Nurse and audience know that Medea will kill the children. Medea begs Jason to ask Creon to pardon the boys from exile and sends them with the Tutor to the palace with expensive (unbeknown to Jason) poisoned gifts for Glauce. Jason once again shows his arrogance by claiming that Glauce will allow the boys to stay, as she will do anything to please him.
The Tutor comes back to Medea elated with the new that Glauce has accepted the gifts and Medea’s sons are free from exile. However, Medea acts very upset as now she know that there is no turning back from her plan and that if she doesn’t kill her children, the Corinthians will do for enacting their mother’s plan. She does not want her children to die at the hands of her enemies.
Then the Messenger relates the information to a gruesomely overjoyed Medea of Glauce and Creon’s deaths. She enjoys the prolonged description of the deaths and the telling of them would have created a lot of pathos from the audience. The Messenger urges Medea to escape, as the Corinthians will surely kill her. Medea then goes into the house to kill her sons.
The Deus ex Machina – final scene, is the third and final confrontation between Medea and Jason. Jason runs to the house to save his sons but when he finds out that Medea has already killed them he bangs on the doors for the slaves to open them so that he can kill Medea in revenge. However, Medea appears in a chariot sent by Helios driven by dragons upon which, the corpses of Medea’s sons are lying. It is as though Euripides is hailing Medea. Usually the bodies of the dead were rolled out on a trolley in tragedy and only a god was elevated above the hut, however, Euripides is challenging this with his own innovations to shock the audience. It is also as though he god Helios is pardoning and even condoning his granddaughter’s actions by rescuing her from Corinth and taking her to Athens. Medea then delivers a prophecy to Jason: he will live out a miserable and childless old age and will die unheroically when a beam from his precious Argo falls on him, shattering his skull. Medea wouldn’t even let Jason bury his own sons.
There are three disturbing messages in ‘Medea’: 1) A god pardoned her actions. 2) A mere woman triumphed over a husband, and a hero one at that. 3) She was a barbarian who was now going off to the most respected citadel in Greece: Athens, to live with and marry the king Aegeus. In short, Medea had won by destroying all boundaries to a foreign woman in Greece.