Medea II: Marry Medea?

Regarding Medea: If you are female, would you marry Jason? Why or why not? If you are a male, would you marry Medea? Why or why not? Cite specifics from the text to support your response but then offer the reader your gut feeling about either Jason or Medea. Your gut feeling does not need to be substantiated.

Medea is such a rich, complex character. If Euripides was interested in psychological realism, he certainly succeeds with conflicted, magical, magnificent Medea. Is she wife material, however? I have been married for seven years now, so I have a real flesh-and-blood woman as a point of reference.

In my view, character is everything when considering with whom to spend your life. Medea exhibits strengths and weaknesses on this point. Her fierce loyalty to Jason is on display throughout "Jason and the Golden Fleece" and "Medea." She is willing to leave her home in Colchis to become "a stranger in a strange land" in Hellas (197). All she asks is that Jason give her his word that he will remember her help in capturing the Golden Fleece (197). When Aeetes threatens the Argo, Medea is willing to sacrifice her own brother to save Jason: "For we must push little Apsyrtus into the grasping hands of Thanatos!" (216). Endlessly resourceful, Medea disguises herself as a priest of Artemis in order to help Jason remove Pelias from the throne of Iolcus (221).

Medea asks for only one thing from Jason in exchange for all of this: faithfulness. This is, of course, too much to ask for the supremely fickle Jason. When Jason breaks his wedding vow to marry Glauce, he unleashes the darker side of Medea's character (227). Suddenly, Medea's love turns to hate. She cannot bear to be mocked: "For I cannot let Jason abuse me! Or he will laugh at me ... And wherever I walk upon Mother Gaea, I will hear it mock me." (237). Medea then turns all her considerable creativity and power towards making Jason suffer. First, she murders Glauce and King Creon (239). Then, to leave Jason utterly alone in the world and despite the protests of a mother's heart, she kills her sons as well (239).

While I admire Medea's courage and loyalty, I would be afraid to marry someone capable of "such reckless hate" (Tolkien, "The Two Towers"). Though I like to believe that I would never betray Medea like Jason did, everyone makes mistakes. Forgiveness is essential to any healthy relationship, especially a marriage.

My gut feeling is that Medea is neither completely good nor completely evil; she is simply human. She is truly one of us.

Medea I: Medea's Alter Ego

By our standards, Medea's behavior is understandable but grossly unacceptable. If Medea were a modern American woman, what would she be? Why? Would she have a profession or vocation? If so, what?

Medea is clearly a conflicted, complex character. Though she ultimately kills her brother and her children, their deaths exact a terrible personal cost. The decision to kill her children is excruciating. Euripides pulls back the curtain of her mind to reveal the battle between a mother's devotion to her children and a jilted lover's lust for revenge. "Why should I deprive them of their growing up, their wedding, and their happy times? For they carry no blame upon their small shoulders! And surely this unspeakable deed would hurt me twice as much as it would hurt Jason!" (237). Medea will not be mocked: "Everyone will laugh at me!" (237). In the end, her anger drives her to kill her own children (239).

Jody Foster as an American woman who understands Medea's need for vengeance. While I have no reason believe that Foster herself is vengeful, her performance in the 2007 film "The Brave One" convinced me that she would understand Medea. Foster played an NPR-inspired radio host named Erica Bain. Bain and her boyfriend are brutally beaten by New York thugs. Her boyfriend eventually succumbs to his injuries and dies. Before becoming a victim of crime, Foster's character was an idealistic, sunny optimist. Instead of retreating from the world, Bain finds a "stranger inside her" that longs for only one thing: revenge. Erica buys a gun and pursues a life of vigilante justice.

Erica Bain and Medea eventually get revenge on the people who wronged them. Neither character finds healing or solace in their vengeance, however. Erica Bain is asked how a person recovers from being the victim of a crime so terrible. Her response is, "You don't."

Euripides' Medea

The following summary of Medea is due to SparkNotes.

Euripedes' Medea opens in a state of conflict. Jason has abandoned his wife, Medea, along with their two children. He hopes to advance his station by remarrying with Glauce, the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth, the Greek city where the play is set. All the events of play proceed out of this initial dilemma, and the involved parties become its central characters.

Outside the royal palace, a nurse laments the events that have lead to the present crisis. After a long series of trials and adventures, which ultimately forced Jason and Medea to seek exile in Corinth, the pair had settled down and established their family, achieving a degree of fame and respectability. Jason's recent abandonment of that family has crushed Medea emotionally, to the degree that she curses her own existence, as well as that of her two children.

Fearing a possible plot of revenge, Creon banishes Medea and her children from the city. After pleading for mercy, Medea is granted one day before she must leave, during which she plans to complete her quest for "justice"--at this stage in her thinking, the murder of Creon, Glauce, and Jason. Jason accuses Medea of overreacting. By voicing her grievances so publicly, she has endangered her life and that of their children. He claims that his decision to remarry was in everyone's best interest. Medea finds him spineless, and she refuses to accept his token offers of help.

Appearing by chance in Corinth, Aegeus, King of Athens, offers Medea sanctuary in his home city in exchange for her knowledge of certain drugs that can cure his sterility. Now guaranteed an eventual haven in Athens, Medea has cleared all obstacles to completing her revenge, a plan which grows to include the murder of her own children; the pain their loss will cause her does not outweigh the satisfaction she will feel in making Jason suffer.

For the balance of the play, Medea engages in a ruse; she pretends to sympathize with Jason (bringing him into her confidence) and offers his wife "gifts," a coronet and dress. Ostensibly, the gifts are meant to convince Glauce to ask her father to allow the children to stay in Corinth. The coronet and dress are actually poisoned, however, and their delivery causes Glauce's death. Seeing his daughter ravaged by the poison, Creon chooses to die by her side by dramatically embracing her and absorbing the poison himself.

A messenger recounts the gruesome details of these deaths, which Medea absorbs with cool attentiveness. Her earlier state of anxiety, which intensified as she struggled with the decision to commit infanticide, has now given way to an assured determination to fulfill her plans. Against the protests of the chorus, Medea murders her children and flees the scene in a dragon-pulled chariot provided by her grandfather, the Sun-God. Jason is left cursing his lot; his hope of advancing his station by abandoning Medea and marrying Glauce, the conflict which opened the play, has been annihilated, and everything he values has been lost through the deaths that conclude the tragedy.