Summary
All is not well in the state of Corinth. Medea, luckless Medea, has learned of her husband’s blasé disregard for their sacred marriage vows—Jason, under the guise of securing a proper future for their sons, has taken a foreign bride, the princess of Corinth, daughter of King Creon. This, understandably, does not please Medea. After all, it was she who aided his Argonauts upon the Argo, was it not? She who betrayed her own father, King Aeëtes of Colchis, in order to help Jason take the Golden Fleece. She who followed him to Greece, wed him, and bore him children. So much for love…
While Jason is off with his young bride, Medea bemoans her face and ponders vengeance for the wrongs she has suffered, declaring to the Chorus, “Woman in most respects is a timid creature, with no heart for strife and aghast at the sight of steel; but wronged in love, there is no heart more murderous than hers.”
Creon appears at this inopportune moment. Fearing Medea’s rage, not only for his future son-in-law, but for himself and his daughter as well, he has decided to send Medea and her two sons into exile. Medea, already plotting her revenge, begs Creon for one day—a single day—to prepare her departure. This Creon grants her, sealing his own grim fate (though he doesn’t know it yet).
After Creon has left, Jason arrives, in all his careless arrogance. He scoffs at Medea’s suggestion that it was she who helped him obtain the Golden Fleece, claiming that he was aided by Aphrodite alone, then touts the righteousness of his newly secured marriage. Adding insult upon a mountain of injury, he adds:
“You women have actually come to believe that, lucky in love, you are lucky in all things, but let some mischance befall that love, and you will think the best of all possible worlds a most loathsome place. There ought to have been some other way for men to beget their children, dispensing with the assistance of women. Then there would be no trouble in the world.”
So there goes diplomacy. Naturally, such words do not appease Medea’s black rage. The two part with bitter words. Soon after, Medea runs into Aegeus, King of Athens, who has recently consulted the Apollo’s oracle at Delphi. He sympathizes with her plight and swears on the gods that he will welcome her in Athens, no matter who demands her return.
And thus Medea’s plan begins to fall into place. Having secured a refuge from any future enemies, she sends for Jason and pretends to reconcile with him, apologizing for her behaviour and begging him to at least allow their sons to remain in Corinth to be brought up in the courts of Creon. Jason agrees. Medea also insists on sending gifts to the princess, a beautiful gown and a gold diadem—peace offerings laced with poison.
Off stage, Medea’s sons deliver her gifts to the princess. Though bitter against Medea, she is overcome by the beauty of the gown and crown and dons both. Soon, however, she pales, staggers, and collapses, shaking, into a chair. Blood begins to seep from her skin. Then, as Medea’s crowning achievement, the diadem bursts into flame. Screams fill the palace. Creon, rushing in at the sound, embraces his daughter and tries to help her. He too suffers her same fate, and they die together on the cold palace floor.
Meanwhile, Medea’s innocent sons have returned to her. Medea, having heard the news from a messenger, knows that her first deed is accomplished. Her rival for the marriage bed is dead. But Jason has not yet paid for the full measure of his wrong actions. He will suffer. He will regret he ever crossed her. She takes her sons’ tiny hands, leads them off stage, and murders them.
Jason, knowing it was Medea’s magic that killed the king and the princess, arrives in a rage. But he is too late, the Chorus tells him. Medea has done her deed. Their children are dead. Horrified and disbelieving, Jason swears that he will punish her for what she has done. But he’s too late to the draw. Ever a step ahead of him, Medea appears suddenly in a chariot drawn by dragons, lent to her by her grandfather, the Sun. At her feet lay the limp corpses of her children.
Jason screams bitter words at her, but Medea is beyond caring. “You have gambled and lost,” she says. Revenge, it seems, tastes sweeter than happiness. With that, she snaps her reins and flies off.
Personal Thoughts
Given how often and how highly it is touted in Classics circles, Medea did not quite live up to expectation. While the plot is engaging, Medea is difficult to sympathize with as a character. Her grievances are great, undoubtedly, but she single-mindedly dedicates herself to the destruction of others. Although her primary target is Jason, towards whom her revenge may be justified, but other innocents—King Creon, the princess of Corinth, and Medea’s own sons—become collateral of her blind rage. From a modern perspective, such ruthlessness sets her apart as a deeply troubling protagonist. And yet, one cannot but wonder, did Euripides intend for her to be the object of our sympathies?
On the one hand, Euripides has given Medea an extensive and compelling inner dialogue. We are brought into her room, quite literally at times, to witness her fears, her devastation, her passions. She is invoked as a wholly realized character. Even so, she evolves over the course of the play into something of a foil for both misguided “womanly” passion and “manly” cunning—both of which, we are led to believe, are deeply destructive when removed from their rightful places.
This claim, perhaps, deserves some expansion. Firstly, Medea’s love for Jason and her consequent anger towards his marriage are depicted as a womanly weakness. During their conversations, Jason frequently criticizes her inability to master her heart, claiming that “[i]t is only natural for your sex to show resentment when their husbands contract another marriage.” Medea herself echoes similar sentiment, though more poignantly, in one of her own monologues: “Woman in most respects is a timid creature, with no heart for strife and aghast at the sight of steel; but wronged in love, there is no heart more murderous than hers.” The underlying assumption about femininity is clear: a woman’s heart will cloud her mind and cause her to act erratically.
However, Medea subverts such an ungenerous stereotype through her cunning, which is often portrayed as a masculine characteristic in Greek literature (Odysseus, in particular, comes to mind). She is described as having a “dangerous mind,” and is exiled from Corinth precisely because Creon fears the “evil knowledge she possesses.” Jason falls prey to her wiles, as does the hapless King Aegean of Athens, and it is Medea’s stunning cleverness that allows her to execute her plan so seamlessly. The men of the play fear her precisely because she has subverted their ideals of proper feminine behaviour—because her mind will not submit to theirs.
For this reason, Medea has been commended as a feminist play, one in which a woman is portrayed as a strong, independent, and cunning character. She declares of herself, “Nobody shall despise me or think me weak or passive. Quite the contrary. I am a good friend, but a dangerous enemy. For that is the type the world delights to honour.” Yet, I hesitate to agree that this is a display of feminism (though not because I think Medea as a character is not strong, independent, or cunning. Those things she clearly is.). Consider, throughout the narrative, Medea’s “womanly” caprice, paired with her “manly” cunning, leads to the destruction of everyone around her. She herself escapes death, that is true—but at what cost? She has stepped beyond acceptable societal bounds and the results are disastrous. That Euripides was portraying Medea as a subversive role model is a tough pill to swallow, and one his original audience might have choked on.
Instead, this play rings with warnings: warnings against subverting the “proper” order of husband over wife, state over citizen, and reason over love. Each of these structures has crumbled by the end of the play, and disaster runs rampant as a result. Medea, being replaced as a wife, seeks revenge on Jason. Being exiled from her state, she murders the king of Corinth. Being overcome by madness, she kills her children in the name of love. Is it not possible, then, that Medea was written as a warning rather than as encouragement? Medea may fly away successfully on a chariot drawn by dragons, but she has left hell in her wake.
Medea is available for purchase at the following sites:
- Amazon USA: Medea and Other Plays (Penguin Classics)
- Amazon CA: Medea and Other Plays (Penguin Classics)
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