Medea
Medeia
A woman betrayed and cast aside by a husband who owes her everything will exact a vengeance so total, killing her own children to destroy him utterly, that it exposes the limits of a society's justice toward women it treats as disposable.
- betrayal provoking total vengeance
- infanticide as the ultimate act of revenge
- critique of women's position in marriage
- Medea as neither pure victim nor pure monster
- escape via divine chariot
Medea, performed in 431 BC, follows the sorceress Medea after her husband Jason abandons her to marry the daughter of Corinth's king, having already betrayed her own family and killed her brother to help Jason win the Golden Fleece. Rather than accepting exile and humiliation, Medea plots and executes a devastating revenge, killing Jason's new bride and the bride's father with poisoned gifts, and finally murdering her own two sons by Jason to inflict the greatest possible suffering on him, before escaping in a dragon-drawn chariot sent by her grandfather the sun god. Euripides gives Medea an unusually powerful voice to indict the position of women in Greek marriage and society, without softening the horror of what she ultimately does, leaving audiences unable to resolve her into either simple victim or simple monster.
Commentary
Readers' notes on this work. No account needed - be scholarly, or at least civil.
Loading commentary…