Hey, first time on this page, looking for some constructive criticisms i guess. I don't think i'm that great at essay writing hence why i couldn't finish it, but yeah thanks in advance.
“What god will hear your imprecation, oath breaker, guest-deceiver, liar.”
Despite Medea’s actions, it is Jason who remains the most contemptible character in play. Do you agree?
Euripides’, Medea, a play which expertly positions its audience, to be eventually disgusted by the ruthless actions of Medea murdering her children. The patriarchal society that was present in Athenian society 431 B.C., initially makes us feel sympathy for Medea with the Chorus as she is a foreign woman that has been abandoned by her selfish husband who uses the views and values of the society to make sense of his actions. Jason has broken sacred marriage oaths and deceived his house. It was common for a man to leave his wife in Athenian society but not in such a callous manner. Jason uses rhetoric to rationalize what he has done and to convince Medea that her and the children will be better off. It would not just be the Chorus that feels Jason is contemptible, but Euripides targets the male audience of 5th century to disapprove and criticize Jason’s actions. While Medea’s actions are driven by emotion, her adoption of hate from passion allows her to commit filicide. In contrast, Jason, who represents the archetypal Greek male, devalues emotional commitment. A society that mirrored 431 B.C Athens, makes the male audience feel uncomfortable as it displays the injustices of a civilisation that believed it had moral superiority.
Medea’s actions are motivated by passion, her passion that becomes hatred allows her to become destructive and despicable. Initially the Chorus’s “heart suffers too” because Medea’s “world has turned to enmity”. The Nurse also feels sympathy for Medea but she is “afraid”, the Nurse knows “some dreadful purpose is forming in her mind”. She was a wife that “seeks only to please her husband”, however Jason destroyed Medea’s reputation and dignity as a helpless foreign woman in Corinth with a “sting of injustice”. In Medea’s plan for revenge she acts as an “utterly ruined” woman before Creon and Aegeus to seem innocent and secure her revenge and a place of refuge. In polis Medea acts as if she “accepts her place”, however in oikos she plans to “perish [Jason’s] whole house”. Medea would have frightened the 431 B.C. male audience with her ability to rapidly change to a “wild bull” as she “comes out doors” and enters the male’s domain. This is when the Chorus starts to lose sympathy, when they realise that Medea is going to follow through with the act of filicide. The Chorus is pivotal in play as they are a group of women, that were played by men, thus having similar views to what the audience would during the play. Medea’s act of filicide on her children, was the final blow to Jason “to break [his] heart”, however it was also to stop the laughing of her enemies, as to her, it was greater then the grief of her children. The point in the play where Medea is seen as a “child murderer” and to the audience of 5th century Athens her actions are despicable.
In a society that empowered males, Jason demonstrates the dangerous masculine tendency to entirely disregard emotion in human relationships. Euripides’ Greek audiences were forced to concentrate on the issues raised by the characters’ speeches due to his use of small theatre and thus his audience’s distance from the actors. Alongside this, the stylised costuming of the masked actors and the intrusion of the choral commentary preclude the sort of identification and character development made possible by modern filmic methods. Euripides draws on Aristotles theory of rhetoric and attempt to clearly expose the need for balance between ethos, logos and pathos, which is something the the characters fail to do. The 5th century male audience of Medea, would have found it difficult to sympathise for Medea who used pathos. Whereas, Jason had different qualities such as reason, rationality and dominance, traits that the audience would of admired. It would have been easier for the audience to connect with Jason who left Medea “for a royal bed”, then it would have been with Medea who was emotionally suffering from “grief”, although she would not be “censure[d]”. By securing marriage with Glauce, he is also securing a royal and respected status and possibly royal offspring. The “betrayal” of Medea would have been understood by the Athenian audience because of Medea’s “barbarian” status she gained from living in Colchis, she would not be suitable for such a civilised society. Jason is plagued by his hubris, the traits he possesses which are admired by the audience, causes incivility and causes him to ignore emotional factors which influence pivotal decisions. After Jason’s house and the royal house have been destroyed he attempts to imprecate Medea “upon the gods”. Jason does not see the necessity of pathos, it causes him to be ignorant and leads to the death of his children, Euripides cleverly forces the audience to question the values of their society.
The positioning of the audience by Euripides, forces the them to critique Jason’s traits, the traits that they admire and value themselves. In accordance with the plays circular structure, Medea is seen in the prologue “collapsed in agony”, understandably because she has been sent into “exile”, now isolated and disempowered because of the actions of Jason. However, by the close of the play this come around to Jason when he is beneath Medea “sitting in a chariot drawn by dragons” with the children out of his reach, she does this to rip away Jason’s manhood, as the man would traditionally “bury [the children]”.
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