MEDEA: THE ALIENATED “Oh my beloved country of Colchis. Where are you? Where is my father?
Will no one help me?” (Euripides, 2015, p. 26)
Medea did not kill her kids for altruistic reasons only; even though altruism may be the most common reason for infanticide, women also kill their kids when they are suffering from deep emotional disturbances. West defines maternal acutely psychotic infanticide as the crime of child murder occurring because the mother is mentally unstable or suffering from a strong Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD (2015, Para.11). Psychology journals define PTSD as “… an emotional condition that sometimes follows a traumatic event, particularly an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious bodily injury to oneself or others and that creates intense feelings of fear, helplessness, or horror” (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2014, Para.1).
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Having lost her only support in the country, Jason, Medea is realising the full extent of the trouble she is in; she cannot go back to her homeland after betraying her father and killing her brother; she cannot go to Iolcus again after she coaxed Pelias’s daughters into killing him; and she cannot stay in Corinth because her husband deemed her expendable and married another who banished her from the land. When Jason took another woman, who was younger, prettier and richer, it injured Medea’s pride and reduced her feelings of self-worth; all of which contributed to her alienation from society (Cyrino, 1996, p. 4). In a successful depiction of her broken spirit and reduced self worth, Euripides casts Medea in the beginning of the play as a devastated woman weeping and moaning rather than the strong woman, that we see in the scenes that followed, plotting revenge (2015, p. 18). This implies that even when she was seeking vindication against Jason, she was an unstable soul suffering from