Nicholas Archer

Medea, the Outsider

Medea is a rather well known character in the ancient world. Many play writers have
tried to portray in different ways in order to evoke different emotions out of their audiences. She
is a victim in a classic Greek tragedy; however some play writes have twisted this idea of her and
changed it into something entirely different, sometimes completely unexpected. Euripides
Medea starts out with our protagonist Medea as a victim but as the play goes on, her character
develops into something that may not have been deemed culturally normal. By examining
Euripides portrayal of Medea, her character and its development will be followed and elaborated
on. A note on the cultural norm of women in Greek society in those times will be made in order
to show the difference between what Medea was doing and what was expected of her. A
conclusion will then be drawn on what Euripides was trying to accomplish with his radical image
of Medea.
Medea was a terrible victim of circumstance. In the beginning of the play, we are
immediately told that she is weeping not only over the current state of her romantic life but of the
things she had done previously all for Jasons sake (Euripides 26 29). When Medea is finally
brought in, she is in a state of suicidal despair, wishing death upon herself (168 171). It is here
she is shown as the very stereotypical female character, weak, vulnerable, almost pitiful in her
state of mind. She weeps about the state of her relationship with Jason; another common thing
that female characters were shown doing in Greek drama. Euripides barely mentions that she is
in a fact a powerful user of magic; it is only indirectly stated in passing. Having betrayed and
killed her family, exiled from her homeland and Jasons, she is an outsider put into a land where
she is frequently referred to as barbarian. With her family and home gone, what she had left
was her marriage and relationship with Jason. As a foreign woman in Greek society, this was the
only thing, other than her children, that identified her. Even then, her children were seen as

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Medea, the Outsider

belonging to their father in that time. When he marriage fell apart, so too did her identification as
a woman in Greek society (Zelenak 40).
In those times, women were normally only seen as overly eroticized, emotional, child
bearers (Zelenak 40). In Medea, Jason says a few things that directly relate to women being
eroticized. For example, he states that she only committed her crimes for the sake of pleasure in
bed (Euripides 1595 96). It was essential in this kind of tragedy for the eroticized female to be
victimized and suffer. It was easier for an audience to believe the emotions of a female character
or a character that had been feminized simply because people associated that kind of behavior
with women (Zelenak 40). Medea was first placed in this light, only to be changed later on.
Medeas character development ties in with the loss of her identity as a female character.
The turning point, where her suicidal despair turns into sadistic fury, is first evidenced when the
chorus comes into the play (Euripides 187 196) and later completed post Creons visit to exile
her out of fear (428 486). Here, she is scheming and thinking things that were not common of
female characters. Here she is thinking and acting like a male hero, thinking of a way to get back
at the thing that caused her pain. However, unlike the in the stories of male heroes, she has none
of the traditional options (e.g. personal combat, rushing into battle) to reclaim what she had lost
(Zelenak 108). She could only think of ways to reciprocate the pain that Jason brought to her.
She casts off all morals and social norms (seeing as she is no longer a part of that society having
lost her identity) and becomes an uncompromising, self-willed tyrant (Irwin 62), only capable of
performing destructive actions that were tailored to her plan. The turning point of her anger is
also when we first see evidence of Medea being a witch, in all connotations of the word. She
uses magic and her children to kill Jasons bride-to-be and her father. After some reflection, she
then resolves to slay Jasons children, the same children that she mothered. Medea violates

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Medea, the Outsider

whatwas assumed to be the most universal womanly value the maternal instinct. Rather than
protect her children, she butchers them (Zenelak 104).
Her behavior, her righteous but completely uncontained fury, is all she had left after
losing her identity. She acts accordingly to what people see her as, a barbarian. She is portrayed
as some natural disaster, to which moral categories like good and evil are irrelevant (Zelenak
104). Seeing as Medea was not only a woman not playing her correct role but also an outsider
she was able to ascend the idea of a female character do all the things she did. It was because
she was not Greekthat she is able to strike back and pursue her revenge on a heroic scale. She
is marginalized socially, culturally, and politically. In many ways, she is the ultimate outsider
(Zenelak 101). Jason himself says that no Greek woman could do what she had done (Euripides
1596 97). The final scene even has her completely get away with it. Jason is helpless as he tries
to plead with her to let him bury his children. However, Medea is literally and figuratively above
him and his pleas and refuses. It is also similar to Medeas scene with Aegeus. He knows of
Medeas reputation, only in this case it is helpful to her. He shares words to wise for human
understanding with her (801 804). He is wise and recognizes Medea being in a higher position of
actual power. In the play, Aegeus seems to be the only one who sympathizes with Medea and offers a
place once she has been exiled. It seems that Creons action indirectly resulted in his premature
death.
It was said that Euripides was perceived to be a misogynist (Zenelak 100) by hyperfeminizing his other female characters. While this may be initially true in Medea, it is safe to assume
that Euripides portrayal of Medea was not misogynistic in the slightest. He first made her a character
to sympathize with by feminizing her, then completely changing her character around by removing
all instances of the stereotypical Greek female. Ultimately, he wanted his audience to know those

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Medea, the Outsider

elements of feminism and show what happened when, with the right female, i.e. a witch, what could
happen if you took away everything that defined her.

Bibliography
The Medea, Euripides, Richer Resources Publication
Gender and Politics in Greek Tragedy, Michael X. Zelenak, 1998 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
Language and the Tragic Hero, Essay by T.H. Irwin, PA 3131 , L3, 1988