MEDEA THE DESTROYER
The story of Medea and the murder of her two little sons is only a short extract from the Argonaut legend. In 431 BCE, almost 2.500 years ago, the Greek poet Euripides selected him with a keen sense for the drama. This is actually a picture of the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy can be better understood if one knows the prehistory and women. Medea portrayed as strong, rebel, different and unusual woman type character in the story. In this essay I will try to analyse Medea’s story through feminism and standards of women in ancient Greek.
In Greece of the time, women almost had no right to speak against their husbands. Men could divorce their wives and remarry with any woman they wanted. This was the understanding of woman of the period. However, Medea emerged as a protagonist who literally put a stick in this female image. We even see the choir supporting Medea against Jason. Medea is a combative and strong woman according to the female prototype of the period. It is also highly intelligent and cunning. He lies and kills Jason’s Glauke to stay in the city for another day. Euripides’ Medea is one of the most exotic protagonists of the period because there are also masculine dominant characters in the works written at that time. In addition to being a woman, Medea is also a foreigner. In the same period, a stranger from outside the city had little rights and disappeared when he was a woman. Medea summarizes her thoughts about women with the following sentences. ‘’We women are the most unfortunate creatures. (Medea, P.8.L.229) ‘’A man , when he’s tired of the company in his home, goes out of the house and puts an end to his boredom and turns to a friend or companion of his own age. But we are forced to keep our eyes on one all alone.’’ (Medea, L.242–245) “For women, divorce is not respectful; to repel the man, not possible. Still more, a foreign woman, coming among new laws, new customs, needs the skill of magic. If a man grows tired of the company at home, he can go out, and find a cure for tediousness. We wives are forced to look to one man only. And, they tell us, we at home live free from danger, they go’out to battle: fools! I’d rather stand three times in the front line than bear one child.” (L.240)
Exactly the excerpt from Medea’s life is shown, which is also shown in Euripides’ tragedy. When Medea realizes that Jason’s decision to marry the younger, more beautiful, richer and more powerful is irreversible, she wants to die:
I want death to come and sweep me off
let me escape this life of suffering! (L.170)
This gives the motif for the scene, the identity problem: She was Medea — what is she now?
Medea, on the other hand, draws an image to the audience that symbolizes the mental health of women and that women are dangerous. He killed someone from his family for Jason and escaped to Creon with him. When her husband left her, she killed her innocent children. Despite all this, I don’t think Medea gives us the feeling of hate. She is a woman who is ultimately abandoned and heartbroken. We see one of the messages about feminism and gender equality in the play again in the choir. The choir does not support Jason’s actions and supports Medea, but after Medea kills their children, they stop supporting Medea and still do not support Jason. Choir as a woman rather than a man is also one of the unique events of the period. Medea’s punishment is too brutal, but at the same time because he wants the other side to suffer. Medea does exactly what she can most severely punish the faithless husband, she does not take his life but his sons. In doing so, she does not only takes away what he loves most, but also what is socially most valuable, the male heirs, the future of his gender.
Medea’s first step towards liberation from this subordination is that she “sees”, understands, recognizes. The second is that she “settles”. The more precisely she analyses debt and guilt, the more often he reacts to her arguments, the more clearly she sees that her situation is hopeless. Medea murders the rival. Then an increase in their helplessness. She murders her beloved little sons, whom she suddenly thinks to recognize as “the fruits of betrayal from Jason’s seed”, as her “little traitors” (p. 79). It is a kind of rampage in which she reflects exactly what she is doing. Being a woman, being a man — the unbearability of socially constructed and traditional opposites.. What does Medea want to be? A neuter? A monster? A human?
She kills the children and says Jason ‘’ Sure, call me what you like, Lioness, Tuscan Skylla, whatever you like! My job is done and I took my rightful vengeance.’’ (L.1351) But she doesn’t finish the rampage, doesn’t kill herself. When it is all over, she believes she is herself again, clever Medea again. But it’s delusional, self-deception, self-surrender. It is, at least as I understand it, an image for the perversion of the individualization process and a radical image for the exit of women from the power of history through adaptation. Adaptation to patriarchal based violence ideologies and practices. But: This kind of murderous adaptation also means a danger for patriarchal societies, insofar as it destroys the image, the practice and the identity of the domesticated woman.
In this bloody and surprising tragedy, Medea is a powerful and wonderful taboo-breaking character who enlightened the masculine understanding of the period as a woman. This emerged because masculinity did not give women any rights and Medea wanted to cut his own punishment. We identify with and understand the protagonist, no matter how brutal and cold-blooded murder she committed.
Works Cited
“Euripides, Medea David Kovacs, Ed.” Euripides, Medea, Line 214, www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Aabo%3Atlg%2C0006%2C003%3A249.
Roderick T. Long Roderick T. Long (Harvard, and Roderick T. Long. “Ancient Greece’s Legacy for Liberty: Euripides on the Woes of Woman.” Libertarianism.org, 12 June 2020, www.libertarianism.org/columns/ancient-greeces-legacy-liberty-euripides-woes-woman.
Euripides Medea, www.classicalresourcecentre.com/articles/mcnee.htm.
“Euripides’.” Euripides (C.480–C.406 BC) — Medea: Translated by George Theodoridis, www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Medea.php.
