To what extent can the actions of Medea be justified and averted?

by academicsstudiousity (student)

International Baccalaureate World Literature

The title character Medea, from the Greek playwright Euripides is a feminine character that one can sympathize with and fear. In different scenes of the play, Medea murders her brother to aid her lover Jason to achieve his objectives and then “unwomanly” murders her own children to punish him. At this point, Medea emerges as a woman who performs as the other, in an unanticipated way, she is the vicious mother that challenges one of the fundamental suppositions upon which all cultures and societies are constructed, that mothers shield and care for their offspring. Medea does not conform to the feminine traits of a maternal figure that is supposedly weak and to be submissive when faced with injustice. On the contrary, Medea resents and responds aggressively; her heart aches due to betrayal which as anticipated led to reprisal. Medea, not only represents the other as a woman but also as a citizen, as she is foreign to the Greek society.

Hence, Medea makes one reflect on the possibility of otherness in all of us, the other as in evil and vicious reactions is within all humans. Both good and evil can belong to the same individual. The social dissection between the self and other enables us to systematize the world and to implement particular kinds of desired behaviour. In olden Greece, women were perceived as child bearers, care givers and wives and valued for their domestic services. Women endured the estrangement of social principles, of social identities and other related matters.

Consequently, Medea becomes the other because she executes the most unmaternalistic crimes defying the stereotypes of motherhood. She confronts the men’s symbolical world by signifying the wrath of women scorned by men. As a victim of Jason’s betrayal she becomes an abuser. (Euripides, 1963) As she is viciously demoralized by Jason, she retaliates by utilising the male tools of fighting and murders her children in revenge. Her behaviour also confirms that she remains very much connected to all external fundamentals of life, on identity, and social conventions.

Yet, one can argue that Medea is a mother that - by denying and defying the inescapability of motherhood - does not offer anything novel; rather she follows the conformist identity of a subject of violence and of the masculine order. Her actions remain ensnared between the familiarity of victimhood and that of resentment. Medea’s responses cannot be considered erratic but rather expected. Medea only re-affirms and replicates predictably to the issue of resentment in patriarchism, liberalism and feminism as well.

Through analysis of the context, Medea is profoundly betrayed and maltreated by the patriarchal behaviour of her husband ...

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Through analysis of the context, Medea is profoundly betrayed and maltreated by the patriarchal behaviour of her husband Jason. Medea becomes an object of sympathy as she is forsaken by her husband, for whom she betrayed her family and now she is about to be exiled, split from her own children, alienated from the only identity she is able to dwell in, the very identity that she needs to rise above. She has loved her husband devotedly; has risked for him; she has sacrificed her family and even committed crimes in a bid to aid him.

As a Grecian woman, Medea’s husband and children should become the focal point of her life. When Medea was estranged by her husband, her life was at the verge of collapse. As for Jason, women are only tools in gaining security. As such they are or become mere objects, which should be altered and replaced in opportunistic ways. By marrying Creon’s daughter, Jason is seeking social position and status. Jason is unquestionably unashamed, vindictive and conscienceless. There seems to be no space for family in Jason’s vision. He destroys the family unit with his lackadaisical and degrading deeds toward his wife, Medea. Jason seems to be a subject separated from the “group”, who displays an apparent short term and narrow vision of being. (Euripides, 1963)

Toward the end of the tragedy, Medea prefers to be triumphant, commanding, to have power over the lives of her children, to rid Jason off all basis of security and to execute vengeance by finding an avenue to hurt him, wrath triumphs over her reasoning. The murderous act of her own children comes across as the only viable option in restoring balance in her world. In any case, children are considered to be an effort to propagate species against extinction. However, in Medea’s eyes, marriage, love and children have come to symbolize death. The emotion experienced by Medea is comprehensible. “Whoever has done me harm, must suffer harm”. (Euripides, 1963) Her retributive emotion of resentment, vengeance and retaliation is beyond law. Those emotions are cognitive as well as states of belief that are justified. It is possible to say that the anger that one experiences toward those who have done wrong, is entirely appropriate at that moment and might be extremely difficult to think otherwise.

Euripides’s depiction of Medea’s story is of vengeance and violence as a product of retaliation and retribution against wrong doings, a story which may possibly apply to all of us at a certain phase in life. That being said, one must also bear in mind that Medea’s reaction is an extreme example of the inappropriate and extreme human reaction, a double play of violence against violence; it is also an illustration of possible consequences of patriarchal abuses and injustices. The abused and the oppressed can in all possibility react in ways that they carry out the abuse they ultimately have suffered.

Medea asserts herself as a separate entity from her husband and patriarchy by killing her children. Nevertheless, by following the actions of a malicious subject, she is the one who will ultimately suffer over the deaths of her children. (Euripides, 1963) By acting in such a way, Medea has not followed her vulnerability as a mother or a woman. While there maybe a certain essence of glory in all this violence, there is also a great monstrosity when the oppressed turns oppressor. Medea’s reaction to the patriarchal violence and oppression displays accurately how time and again women search for solutions for their sufferings and emotional pain that might be rather ill-assorted with the vulnerability of their human condition and personal lives.

An unpredictable response to violence often shuts down avenues to forgive. One cannot simply refuse forgiveness because, conventionally, women have been considered to forgiving, and accept injustice passively; neither should one resent and fight back, re-appropriating the law of the patriarch. It is thought, that the ability to forgive is not specifically unique to motherhood or women; but rather to the vulnerable human condition as a whole. Forgiveness restores, recovers and allows for possible constructive development. Generally, hurt irreparable or not is usually caused by loved ones. This is because when individuals love; they trust and let their guards down, in turn exposing their vulnerability to their loved ones. Peace is ultimately broken by their harmful actions and separation is almost certain. However, forgiveness is an act of renewal and letting go, which allows the possibility of restoring the relationship and risking the escalation of further anger and resentment despite the hurt caused.

It is felt that forgiveness is an issue of how one feels about oneself and the other, an attempt to rise above resentment and contravening bouts of violence. It does not involve support, submission to transgression or forgetting, rather an understanding of the unique vulnerability in each of us. Mindfulness means coming to terms with humanity, acceptance of human vulnerability, self-understanding and being able to foresee the consequences of harmful human behaviour.

If Medea had the foresight or the ability to re-evaluate and rationalise her vicious plans and emotions she would have most definitely acted differently. She would not have not have shown weakness by following the use of violence against violence. She would have shown strength of a forgiving self and been a being that ends anguish rather than reproducing it. Inflicting emotional or physical pain to others especially to the vulnerable ones like children is not an act of gaining freedom or independence but it is purely an act of inflicting further hurt and despair. It does not free oneself but ensnares an individual in remorse. In the end, Medea’s foreignness is displayed clearly not through her barbaric origins or social status but through the ugly truth that the foreignness or the other was within her, in her incorrect insight of human vulnerability and individuality.