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Medea Marriage Analysis

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WORLD LITERATURE ESSAY
Euripedes’ portrayal of the theme and significance of marriage in Medea.
Euripedes portrays the central conflict between Medea and Jason as a resultant of Jason’s betrayal of his marriage to Medea, breaking the marriage vows and rejecting the sanctity of her nuptial bed for the politically motivated marriage with Creon’s daughter. The play, Medea, can be interpreted as a searing indictment of the institution of marriage. It is the desecration of this sacred institution by Jason that infuriates Medea and causes her to unleash her wrath upon Jason by committing filicide so as to leave him without sons to carry his family forward.
In ancient Greece, marriage was usually as a transaction …show more content…

Jason’s new marriage with Glauce plummeted Medea into revengeful and passionate fury. She had given up everything to live with Jason after which he had cheated and tricked her. This makes the readers sympathize with Medea. Jason had spurned the privacy, purity, sanctity of their marriage sphere. In the process of wanting to gain honor, he had backstabbed Medea by demoting her from the status of a legal wife to that of a concubine. The words “disowned her” help to emphasize on this fact. When she was with Jason, she had put on the face of Athenian women but when she lost her only connection with Athens she turned into the barbaric animal who couldn’t control her impassionate emotions anymore. The plot is seen to end right after Medea does justice to herself by destroying Jason’s new family and by killing her own children. The structure of the plot portrays the importance and significance Euripedes associates with marriage …show more content…

Medea was a priestess which made her familiar with the concept of sacrifice. At the point of time when she killed her children, she was not a mother but solely a priestess. This portrays Euripedes’ belief that victims who are betrayed turn against their tormentor and everything related to their tormentor. Even though Medea wins over Jason by filling it with pain and sorrow, she does lose a lot. The phrase “Medea why lie down with death?” shows Medea’s desire to exchange her marriage bed with a death bed due to the intense pain she went through. Thus, Euripedes makes it a point that betrayals in marriages can lead to

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This is an ironic statement as Medea is actually planning to kill her children, a fact which the audience does not yet know about. Jason uses another form of rhetorical stretching, which includes his plea that leaving his wife and children was a ‘wise move’, and that the decision was made with Medea’s best interests at heart, as much an attempt to convince himself as much as the audience. The chorus is quick to point out that ‘You have betrayed your wife and are acting badly.’ The Nurse is our first instance of anagnorisis during the play. Though an ancient Greek audience would well be in tune with the stories in Greek mythology, the Nurse’s role would still have proved important, as she was a tool Euripides used to transport the audience

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Through the epilogue described by the nurse, the audience is positioned to understand medea's desire for revenge. The audience may have viewed her position of being betrayed by Jason to be devastating( insert quote instead of devastating) and hold sympathy for her as she is not only an outsider from a presumed barbaric country, but also an exile. During when the play was first performed, religion played a big role in Athenian lives, during which breaking an oath to the gods was considered a crime. Hence, the audience would understand medea's wish to bestow revenge upon Jason for he broke his oath of marriage to her, which was witnessed by the gods, by laying in the 'royal bed'.

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In the play Medea by Euripides, the main characters Jason and Medea are atypical characters in many ways. Medea defies perceptions of the normal attitudes of men and women by overcoming her female emotions and performed acts that the Greeks considered unfeminine.

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In Euripides’ text The Medea, Medea can easily be painted as the villian. She is a woman who killed her own children in an attempt to spite her husband. But, by examining the text, we can see that she deserves some sympathy. She has little to no control over her own life and has to rely on the will of men. And as a foreigner in Corinth abandoned by her husband, she faces even more challenges than the native women of Corinth did.

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but does not bring them kleos. Medea’s attachment to her honor and reputation engages the model of Homeric From her perspective, the charis that she expected in return for her help in Colchis has been annihilated (506–19).8 in Medea’s view, Jason’s new marriage amounts to a destruction of their bond. Her revenge, especially the infanticide, precisely enacts that view. As Christopher Gill (1996: 168–69) has emphasized, by killing the children, Medea destroys the tangible proof of her relationship with Jason; by causing their death, she acts out in the most literal and irreversible manner the vanity of his oaths (496–98) and, ultimately, of their shared past.

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In Medea by Euripides, Medea 's character flaw that ultimately led to her downfall is revenge. Medea 's husband Jason left her to marry a younger, beautiful woman. Medea becomes outraged, and all she thinks about is getting revenge. She kills Glauce, Jason 's new wife, and her father, Creon. She wanted her revenge to be perfect she even killed her own children to get revenge on Jason leaving her.

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As the play begins, Medea has stopped eating and spends her days locked within her own house. She can be heard moaning and rambling from within her home. She even wishes she would die, saying things like, “I am miserable, unhappy in my labors! Oh me, I wish I were dead.” As we as, “I wish I could cast off this hateful life and take my rest in death!”

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Medea plots her revenge by murdering the king, the bride and her two children in order to make Jason suffer and take away everything Jason cared about. The Greek gods felt that Medea was in her right and they proved this by allowing and even helping her escape in the end of the play

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Her despair and grief intrigued everyone in Corinth which led to the appearance of the chorus. Since Medea is a foreigner in their city, it was easier for them to judge Medea for they do not know her. They thought that Medea’s reaction was too much and since she is a woman, she had no rights to act that way. Medea was too devastated to show up yet she wanted to point out her side. She shared her heart breaking story of how Jason left her and their children for Princess Glauke.

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Medea: without doubt, by doing so, this is how I will receive the most relief through all the pain and suffering that Jason, the one I used to love for which I beat for, has wished upon me. All the memories we once created will still be kept within me, but now I must take care of my change of self and expose a coward. [Moments later, Jason’s voice reappears and he shares dialogue with mistress.] Medea: I pace very quickly when the man I used to admire enters the room, but it is his presence that makes me change for the worse rather than the better.

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1006 Words | 5 Pages

Her behaviour could be seen as commendable because she was a character of action rather than a passive female character that would be owned and governed by a man. Medea goes as far to take the lives of her brother, father and her own children. Because Jason destroyed their marriage, Medea too, in a strange way destroyed the products of that marriage. In the end Medea is shown in a chariot drawn by dragons above sent by son god, in contrast Jason is shown sitting on the stairs mourning. This play has multiple endings.

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1607 Words | 7 Pages

Lush explains “Although Euripides did not cast Medea as a male solider as its protagonist, the play depicts Medea as suffering from the background Trauma, betrayal, isolation and consequent symptoms attributed to combat veterans with lasting psychological injuries” (Lush, 2014, p. 25). Hence using Lush’s view on Medea’s character as a devoted warrior suffering from Traumatic hardships in her experiences with the man she gave everything to, we can understand why she wanted revenge. Medea believes Jason owes her more than just the normal husband-wife obligations a man swears to when marrying a woman; in her view, she helped him be the man that he is and supported him throughout his heroic journey. Without her, Jason would not have succeeded in retrieving the Golden Fleece. Without her, he would not have had his father resurrected.

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727 Words | 3 Pages

Women were meant to be submissive and obedient to the dominant figures in society in their eyes, which is why when she acted submissive and feminine, he believed she finally understood his view and gained some sensibility. She told Jason, “Wretched woman (thus I scolded myself), why am I so mad as to hate those that mean me well, to treat as enemies the rulers of this land and my husband, who, in marrying a princess and getting brothers for my children, is only doing what is best for us all?” (Euripides 58). At that point, Medea was discussing in reference his justification for marrying the Princess of Corinth. He claimed that he was marrying her so that he and their children could gain citizenship since currently they were not citizens of Athens and thus, did not receive any benefits or protection.

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1434 Words | 6 Pages

Medea has already lost her husband and her home so this decision is an obvious one for her. She wants to leave everyone in the same misery that she has been experienced and continues to experience. After this, she even plans to murder her own children just to distress Jason further. Medea knows that she will live in regret and misery by doing so, but her need to sadden Jason trumps her own future feelings. The murder of her sons also symbolizes the death of her marriage with Jason.

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Medea, the protagonist, is a woman driven by extreme emotions and extreme behaviors. Because of the passionate love she had for Jason, she sacrificed everything .. However, now his betrayal of her transformed the beautiful loving passion to uncontrollable anger, hatred and a desperate desire for revenge. Her violent and temperamental heart, previously devoted to Jason, now moving towards its doom.

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