Throughout many stories we always see the males at a powerful position and the women tend to be the over bearing crazy type. Whenever something goes wrong we as the audience are always quick to blame to female or say it’s because she having a mental break down. The tragedy of Medea is no different. We all assume that Medea took her rage and acted out in an awful way due to no fault of anyone else. But the truth is that if it wasn’t due to Jason’s selfishness and betrayal to Medea, she would have never acted in the manner that she did, and the blame is to fall upon Jason.
The story of Medea starts off with Jason being sent to steal the Golden Fleece from Medea’s homeland. Through his journey Medea helps him recover the fleece by betraying her family and even having her own brother killed. Medea leaves with Jason and returns to Corinth where they marry and have two sons. Medea is betrayed by Jason when he leaves her for the Princess of Corinth, which in return she releases her rage upon Jason and his new fiancé.
By breaking down this story we can see all the key points, all starting with Jason, on the progress to Medea’s rage and her ultimate sacrifice of her children. From the beginning we she Medea take a strong affection to Jason, a handsome stranger that has arrived to gain the Golden Fleece. Medea makes a deal with Jason to help him get the fleece if he promises to marry her. Jason agrees and uses Medea’s power to get what he wants. Right here is where we first see
For Medea must fall in love with Jason and then she will use her great skill with magic to help Jason acquire the fleece. Because of Hera’s hatred towards Pelias Medea’s life is now destined for extreme agony, shame, and guilt. Her love for Jason causes her to tear away from her loving parents and dishonor her father by helping his enemy. Hera’s plan to avenge Pelias also flood Medea’s head with thoughts to keep her from straying from Hera’s plan. Unfortunately for Medea her decision to help Jason was not her own and was a careful thought out plan by Hera. Her life would never again be the same. Even though Jason promises to love her always and promises that she will be his wedded wife, he breaks this promise as soon as she become old and he is given the opportunity to marry royalty. Medea decisions were not in any way wise but if it were not for the arrows of Eros she would have had better judgment on the stranger. Medea’s behavior in this story shows that of loyalty and confusion in her heart. She is in agony because she can not conceive as to why she feels so much love for a stranger and does not wish to dishonor her father by doing so. But then she is constantly
In Medea, a play by Euripides, Jason possesses many traits that lead to his downfall. After Medea assists Jason in his quest to get the Golden Fleece, killing her brother and disgracing her father and her native land in the process, Jason finds a new bride despite swearing an oath of fidelity to Medea. Medea is devastated when she finds out that Jason left her for another woman after two children and now wants to banish her. Medea plots revenge on Jason after he gives her one day to leave. Medea later acts peculiarly as a subservient woman to Jason who is oblivious to the evil that will be unleashed and lets the children remain in Corinth. The children later deliver a poisoned gown to Jason’s new bride that also kills the King of Corinth.
In the first conversation the reader sees between Medea and Jason, it is clear that Jason is not suffering from the situation at all and even goes to call Medea an idiot for speaking baldy of the king and his daughter, whom he is marrying. Jason claims that the reason he left Medea for the King’s daughter is because he is looking out for the best interest of Medea and their children. He even goes on to tell her, “However much you hate me, I could never wish you any harm.” Although his justification seems like a good excuse and a smart plan, it does not seem genuine seeing as to how quick he dismisses her and does not want to stick up for her by talking to the Creon about letting her stay and not exiling her and their
However, no one in the play except the Nurse thinks for a second that Medea could bring herself to murder her children. Medea even has an internal debate over whether she could bring herself to commit such a crime, showing once again that she is not completely in control of her emotions. In the end, she decides to go through with it rather than leave them “to the mockery of my enemies” (78). In the end, Medea appears in the sky in “a chariot drawn by dragons” (84). She has already killed the boys and she attributes their death to Jason’s “weakness” (86) and his “lustful heart and new marriage” (86). The play ends with Medea disappearing from view with the children.
From the beginning of the play the conflict between good and bad where Medea and Jason are concerned has been ambiguous. Both characters have done terrible things in order to attain what they want. Nothing could stand in the way of them including Medea’s father, whom Medea betrayed and to pile on the grieve she kills her brother and drops parts of him into the sea so as to delay her father thereby ensuring that Jason and his Argonauts could fulfil their quest to attain the Golden Fleece. When Jason betrays Medea and walks away from their marriage we immediately identify him as the villain, yet the reader fails to understand that during that time when this play was written it was still socially acceptable for the man to walk away from his marriage provided he gives back the dowry he attained from the wife’s father. In this case Medea did not bring any such items so it was even easier for him to leave her so as to empower himself. It was Medea’s role as a woman belonging to that age to accept Jason’s decision however she feels betrayed that he would break a vow made in front of the gods, and apparently she was not a regular woman even by the standards of that time as she had an intellect that could rival that of scholarly men. So to exact her revenge she destroys everything Jason loves leaving him to regret ever betraying the marriage.
this way because of how Jason lacked respect for her and drove her to do the horrendous actions. Medea lashing out on Jason further proves the fact that she is her own woman, and becomes the first symbol of feminism in the Greek culture. Another example of Medea’s
In Medea, a woman betrays her homeland because of her love for a man. Jason is the husband that she ferociously loves and makes sacrifices for. They have two children together: Antigone and Ismeme. In Jason's quest for the golden fleece, Medea assists him in multiple ways. One of the things she does to help their cause is bring
Ever since she found out she had been betrayed by Jason, she has had “no pleasure left” in living. The only purpose left in her “cruel” and “accursed” life is to “strike dead” Jason, Creon and Glauce. Medea ends up killing Creon and his daughter but doesn’t make any attempt to kill Jason. To “perish his whole house” and “work revenge on Jason for his wrongs to [Medea]”, Medea plans to kill her two son as “it is the supreme way to hurt [her] husband”. Although Medea feels sad as shown by her “dewy eyes” and “these tears”, the audience are positioned to feel less sympathetic towards Medea due to her murderous actions towards her “own little
Medea’s hurt and anger turns into rage when she plans to make “corpses of three of [her] enemies,” which shows her ambition of creating catastrophe around her to make Jason suffer the consequences. The plan of Medea wanting to kill Glauce and her children shows the audience that Medea is plotting for revenge and will do anything to make Jason suffer. Jason also doesn’t deserve sympathy as his want for power and his strive for ambition is the main issue in this play. Jason left his wife to marry Glauce, the princess of Corinth, to make his life more powerful. Jason doesn’t want Medea ruining his chances of staying in Corinth and one day becoming king.
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
She is willing to punish herself rather than see Jason happy. Her hatred is so deep for Jason after she kills their children she won’t let him bury the children because it is an unspoken way of her telling him that she does not respect him. This is a prime example of madness of love. She is so invested in her love to Jason that his betrayal drives her to do insane things. Love makes you do crazy thing, but Medea is still a crazy murderess.
She tooktime to manipulate him multiple times before she actually fulfilled her destiny. She knew whereto strike first, Creusa. She was the younger, prettier, and a "better" women that Jason left Medeafor. Medea is a smart woman, she knows that she can cause more damage by gaining their trustand making them feel sorry for her, " Forgive me, Jason, as I do you." (Euripides 110.)
When Medea first met Jason she made the huge decision to kill her brother so Jason could get what he wanted. After she had killed her brother her family disowned/kicked her out of there. When Medea had first met Jason she fell madly in love with him due to Aphrodite
ultimate act of revenge towards Jason. She is so set on getting back at him that she commits the most heinous of acts. She murders her two children. Jason's acts may have pushed her over the edge of sanity, but one can argue that even an insane person would take their own life over the lives of their own children. This brings the insanity to a whole new level.
Medea was a troubled soul once Jason left her for a younger princess. When the nurse says “Rulers are fierce in their temperament; somehow, they will not be governed;”, it rings very true of Medea (Puchner 531). Someone so accustomed to getting her way will by no means let anyone, including her beloved Jason, treat her with any disrespect. She not only felt dejected by Jason, but she felt she could do nothing to change her circumstance but take out deadly vengeance against those that committed such a hiatus act towards her. With all things considered, Medea felt Jason took everything from her when he left. Jason became her everything. When she