A Lady Of Medea

Medea intends to establish a bond between the women in order to gain sympathy. Knowing the women of Corinth are aware of her past, Medea

Revenge is a kind of wild justice. Throughout many texts, the notion of justice has been debated on whether it is an act that vindicates those who have been wronged or an excuse to pursue revenge. Through Medea, Medea’s actions have been judged and criticised whether her murders are an act of justice that she deserves or simply the idea of inflicting pain on those she loathes.

Making Medea plot against the king represents the female group as rebellious and unsubmissive to authority. She vows to kill her children and this causes the chorus to be afraid of her. That was a big thing. The Chorus in Greek theater “represented with wonderful truth the Greek inquisitive crowd, and was essentially Athenian in conduct and in spirit” (Lauchlan 13-17). So to have the Chorus afraid of this “evil” woman portrays the general public’s feelings towards Medea. Therefore, the fear of the other characters due to Medea’s immense desire and actions for bloodshed and revenge shows how women are portrayed as crazy and murderous with no sense of empathy. Now, the killing of her children is an interesting strategy that Euripides used to show his misogynistic values. By adding this to the plot and making Medea come up with this plan all by herself shows how Euripides “constructed his character in such a way that the audience will be encouraged to perceive female sexuality and language as… a threat to male offspring” (Rabinowitz 126). This is a genius ultimate blow to feminism seeing that women, through Medea, are portrayed as a threat to not only men but to their offspring.

In her conversation with King Creon, Medea shows her ability to speak her mind. For example, Medea says, “ If you try to bring new wisdom to fools, the fools are furious; if your mind matches the minds of the city’s intellectuals then they’re threatened. But you, Creon you are afraid. Why is that? What damage can I do? I am no insurrectionist, no insurgent against the state” (Euripides 19:20). This quote shows Medea’s courage to defend herself against an authoritative, male figure. During this time, women had no voice. Becnel says, “A woman, married or single, had no vote, no voice in government, could not speak in court — even in her own defense — and was not allowed to conduct financial transactions” (Becnel). This quote shows how strong Medea is portrayed as a woman to speak up during the ancient world. Medea eventually convinces King Creon to let her stay another day. Through this McClure states, “Combined with more traditional feminine means of persuasion, such as supplication, Medea’s blame discourse wins the sympathy of the female chorus and persuades her powerful male interlocutors-Creon, Aegeus, and Jason- to do her bidding. Through these verbal performances, Medea gains control of her opponents” (McClure 373). This quote represents how persuasive Medea’s voice is that she overpowers the males in a male dominant society. Overall, this quality furthers her separation from the rest of

Her revenge was called “’almost a poetic gesture. She kills her kids after (Jason's) done all this, it kind of makes sense,’" in an article by Steve Bornfeld. In the design of the show, I wanted to create a world that absolutely made sense. I wanted the audience to feel the echo of the old cliché that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In our current times, it becomes more and more obvious we still have have not learned from Medea. Medea, to me, wasn’t a woman to be over- sensationalized or set aside as strange. Medea is a cycle, repeating herself generation after generation, who required a timeless and realistic world to spiral downward in, and I strived to give it to her. As long as women find themselves losing control in life and making their children into their victims, Medea will have a practical and current necessity which makes her almost commonplace, which is echoed in every aspect of my production design, from the set and lights to the costuming

For Medea, her “trigger” for her murderous rampage was her beloved husband, Jason, cheating on her with the princess of Corinth. Unfortunately, this is normal in their society, so Medea’s reaction seemed way overblown. This suppressed her feelings in a way, due to the lack of understanding, making her deal with these intense feelings through murder. However, you must think about what Medea is going through. She was sent away from her hometown because she killed family there.

When Medea's quest for revenge leads her to slaughter innocent beings, and some call her justified, but there are many reasons why this is not the case. Those who believe Medea was just in her murders agree that Medea was betrayed by Jason in his breaking of marriage oaths, and in order to bring justice, feels the need to bring suffering to him. Kim Zarins refers to Medea as ¨a victim of Jason's false love¨ (Zarins 2) Medea loved him so passionately and then hated him so much that she was unaware of except her desire for vengeance. David Allsop said,¨ Medea's love of Jason stems from an oath made in the Argonautica, 'in our lawful marriage-chamber

In the beginning on the play it was shown that Medea was so much hurt because of her husband’s second marriage that she wanted to kill her. She also begged to god to have a lightning to split her head but after thinking about the incident with all of her cleverness she thought it will not be worth dying, but making Jason and his newly wedded wife suffer will do her some justice and let her die in peace. She also wants Jason’s wife’s father Creon to suffer as he a banded her from her own country. She changed her plan of suicide to killing Jason’s wife so she can take revenge from both her husband and Jason’s father-in-law. She made a nice plan of giving a dress to newly wedded wife as a gift from her and also tell her to accept her children,

This is the defining part of the play on who Medea is; someone that creates her own fate and disprove expectations. Which is what led her to the conclusion of killing her own children, knowing that this will hurt Jason the most, even over being murdered. Because men primarily care about family lineage and Medea ended Jason’s family forever with this heinous act. All these events portray Medea as a fearsome sorceress that will not tolerate being taken advantage of. Her traits of power and strength come during the scene when she is about to kill her children and is indecisive; but in the end her anger towards Jason overpowered her love of the children and she murders them. In the last scene of the play when she is above Jason in a godly chariot pulled by snakes the audience gets a sense of her cleverness and how she is different from other female characters. She will not risk being captured and was always two steps ahead of Jason the whole time. This is far different than what is usually expected, because the hero is defeated by a woman and she leaves without any sort of punishment. Medea as described in this play is a powerful/revengeful sorceress that outwitted her husband and managed to escape punishment for filicide.

Medea is the tragic story of a woman desperate for revenge upon her husband, after he betrayed her for another woman’s bed. It was written by Euripides, a Greek playwright, in 431 B.C. Throughout the play each character shows us their inconsistent and contradicting personalities, in particular, Jason and Medea. The play opens with the Nurse expressing her anxiety about Jason betraying and leaving Medea for another, wealthier, woman. Our initial reaction is to feel empathetic towards Medea, who has been abandoned so conveniently. But towards the end of the play, when Medea takes revenge on

And, Medea, I'm not surprised you grieve at these events.” (308-310). While they do not always support the exact methods Medea wishes to use for gaining her revenge, the Chorus still understands, the reader seemingly should also understand and empathize with Medea. This seems to further prove to the reader that Medea is just the victim of all of this. Especially because, soon after this Creon enters the picture and things get even worse for Medea, he accuses her of witchcraft and demands she leave along with her children. “You there, Medea, scowling in anger against your husband. I'm ordering you out of Corinth. You must go into exile, and take those two children of yours with you.” (314-317). The biggest problem with this is Medea has literally nowhere to go, causing her to become even more desperate for revenge. Otherwise both she and her children would die since they are not accepted anywhere. While Medea’s initial intent seemed to only be oriented towards harming Jason, with the announcement of her impending exile Creon and his daughter will now have to face her

She helped him in every way possible in his quest for the Golden Fleece, “Her heart on fire with passionate love for Jason... But now there’s hatred everywhere. Love is diseased.” (1) However, in a tragedy, the hero is supposed to make a single mistake which ultimately leads to their downfall. In this case, Medea is not a heroic character as she is a sorceress, murders her brother, and her own children. The hamartia is intended to bring down a character of high morality, but Medea can be viewed as a wholly evil character who is not guided by any moral principles. She is also manipulative and deceptive in the way that she treats the men around her, Creon, Aegeus, and Jason, while involving them in her plan for revenge. Euripides has shown this aspect of her personality through lines such as “Do you think that I would have fawned on that man unless I had some end to gain or profit in it?” (12) and “by a trick I may kill the king’s daughter” (25)

However, once again though, we see this sharpness behind her veil of weakness ("no bloodier spirit"). With this said though, it is not a murderous, maniacal rage. She makes clear reference to the fact that she is part of the group of wretched women and that she is simply striking back as a woman "scorned". When Creon comes on the stage, she continues with the pitiable appearance, begging ("I kneel to you, I beseech you"). She tries to persuade Creon that he has no threat from her, using the fact that she is a woman to make him disregard her power ("I'm in no position - a woman - to wrong a king"). However, after this scene is where the image of Medea as a feeble woman ends. The Chorus indicate their pity and that Medea's plight "touches our hearts". But at this point, Medea becomes the murderous and dangerous woman that will kill her children and cackle with glee at the thought of Glauce's death. She declares that she manipulated Creon, fawning on him "to gain my purpose". She still holds our pity but not in the same intensity (until eventually she finally loses pity almost completely in her double-infanticide).

Medea separates herself from the rules set for Athenian women with her ability to displays a cruel, driven by revenge, and Machiavellian women. Her well planned out revenge would have been impossible for any woman average Athenian women. Medea declines the thought of women being inferior of all parts of the body and mind. Her use of how women were regarded and thought of by all Greek men, enabled her to Medea achieve her plan she had from the start. She killed the queen, her children, a destroyed her husband's future for happiness or recovery. Medea was able to go through with her revenge since she became possessed by her eager for revenge. Her cruel and nasty mindset over took her completely. Medea was a very clever woman that used ignorance

In the Medea, the dichotomy of intelligence versus ignorance is shown when the protagonist's cunning is severely underestimated by all those around her. Jason believes that she is foolish for carrying on as she does; he says, “[y]ou women have come to such a point to think, if things go right in bed, you have everything,” (569-570) but he misses that she is angry about her station in life and intends to change it. As Shirley A Barlow explains in “Stereotype and Reversal in the Medea,” The protagonist is “aware of more than the fact that she suffers and injustice. She is aware that the root cause is beyond herself.” (Barlow 160). Creon seems to glimpse what she is capable of when he tells her that he fears her (282), but he still allows her to stay in Corinth for one more day, (355-6) proving that he is ignorant after all. Medea is far more clever than the men around her and she knows how to manipulate them. When she appeals to Creon (340) and later