Medea

[beccaelizabeth]

Medea really doesn't pull any punches.
It's kind of eloquently nasty.

So, Jason dumps Medea and the kids so he can marry a princess. Which is terrible for her, cause this is the guy she killed her brother for, amongst other things. She's done all these terrible things to be with him, and now he dumps her for a blonde. So then the girl's dad, understandably wary after Medea's track record, decides to exile her and the kids. And Jason, being such a prince, turns up to explain how it's all for the best really, and BTW he did it all for her, and hey, he married a princess, isn't that cool? And, okay, maybe not cool for her, but great for the kids! They'll get to be princes! He did it all for the kids. That makes it okay, right? Only nobody agrees with him. Especially Medea. She sorts out another kingdom to go to, sends poison to the blonde princess, and then kills the children.
In other versions of the story the children got killed by the locals as revenge for the princess and the king getting poisoned. But in this one it's all Medea.
So you'd think that this is all horrible terrible stuff and the gods will strike her down - Jason thinks that - but instead her grandfather the sun sends her a glowy chariot to take her away through the sky to safety.
So I guess the moral of the story is you can get away with anything if grandad is a god.
Or possibly, don't dump the multiple murderess you married.

But it's not just about the events. We don't really see stuff happen. People have big debates about it, do speeches at each other and stuff.

And Medea isn't some moustache twirling villain... er, that's the wrong phrase for a girl, huh. I mean, she doesn't just coldly decide this stuff. She's all in agonies about it, and sometimes you think she'll back out, but then she talks herself back into it. And there's a whole bunch of stuff about how unfair the position of women is, how their only hope is to get a good husband, and you can never know which one is good, cause Jason seemed golden but here he is dumping her. Lots of stuff about women being stuck. And some bits about how she'd rather go into battle three times than have one baby. Questioning standard definitions of courage, there.

But it's also really easy to read the whole thing as woman hating. Medea goes so far the other women in the story are horrified. She has big speeches about the weakness and nastiness of women too.

So it's a big argument in lots of ways.

Is going to be interesting to study.



I think I'll wait on reading the next one for another day. Give this one room to digest.


Also, the read-this-before-class thing seems a lot less scary now. It's pretty short once you get going. And it don't half pull you along.

Comments

[mcamason.livejournal.com]

I'd thought that the fact that her children would not get to be princes, that they'd be not much better than slaves in their father's household, was one of the reasons Medea decides to kill them: a frakked-up view of it being more merciful to them.

It's been twelve years since I read it, though, so my memory may be faulty.

I remember us discussing her as a feminist because she takes the right to decide the life or death of the offspring away from the father: she usurps the father's role, and that makes her incredibly dangerous, because she might give other mothers ideas....

[mcamason.livejournal.com]

edit: not necessarily "feminist" in the sense we view it now, of course...Medea is a tough one to talk about because all sorts of prejudices about what is and isn't "natural" mother-behavior are called into question by her actions.

[beccaelizabeth]

*nodsnods*

[beccaelizabeth]

I was just saying how Jason was trying to sell it, the all for the kids bit. Nobody, even the chorus, believes him. I don't know any background stuff yet, have only read the Penguin Classics Euripedes Medea and Other Plays. And not the Other Plays bit yet.

Is going to be interesting.

Feminist is... er, yeah, but not, but... much thinky stuff.