"Do you think I would have groveled like that before the king if I did not have a plan? No. I would have said nothing. I would not have touched him. But he-oh what a fool-he has given me a day. A day! If he had banished me now, right now, he would have thwarted all my plans. So. Now. This day will see the death of all my enemies. Death to the king, his daughter, and my husband...There is only one thing i am afraid of: being caught as i enter the house or while setting the fire. They'd kill me on the spot and my enemies would have the last laugh..." - Medea
-Medea by Euripides (22-23)
This part of the passage is when Creon, King of Corinth tried to banish or exile Medea from the city because of fear. He was afraid that she would basically do some sort of black magic to get back at Jason. Jason was Medea's husband, however; he divorced her to marry the princess of Corinth; Glauce. The whole royal family is afraid Medea may do something to harm the family, so they believe it is in their best interest to send her away. Although they try to send her away on the very exact day, Medea pleads for an extra day to find a place to stay and a safe area for her two sons. Which is a lie to get this extra day. The King does not believe she can do any harm with one day, so he grants her his wish which is exactly what Medea wanted. She decides to use her children as a way to kill the king and princess by planting poison within the gifts. This plan succeeds as seen later on in the story, but she also decides to kill her kids to make Jason absolutely miserable. She wanted to kill the kids because then Jason would have nothing else to look forward to and his whole life would be destroyed.
I chose this passage because it really summarizes what Medea wants to do and her reason behind it. As it says in the passage, she does not want them to have the last laugh.(King, princess, Jason) This motivates her to go all out to make sure nothing positive can come out of everything she does. This passage stuck out to me because it opened me up to how clever Medea is by first, convincing the King to let her stay one more day, and second, for figuring out a way to execute her whole plan. Also, this part stuck out to me because it says death to the king, the princess, and the husband, but in reality she really does not kill Jason. The kill part could mean figuratively as she took everything hes ever had away. This story and passage made me realize how much woman hate it when men leave them in this type of manner. Jason's excuse was that he left her because he wanted a better life for the kids, but hes the reason Medea killed them. Medea is a great novel of a strong women who stands up for herself and goes out to get what she wants. She may have gone a "little" overboard by killing her kids, but during those times, a divorced woman is no woman at all.
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I agree with you about what you wrote about Medea, she was CRAZY. I also enjoy your quote, and agree with your last statement about a devorced woman being the equivelence of nothing, infact that's what my quote was on. I personally enjoyed this play and enjoyed the quote you picked out, because it reminded of how crazy Medea truely was. I also liked how you pointed out that killing Jason's future wife, her father and his children would kill his soul, because at the end of the play I was questioning why she never killed him, eventhough that was the major part of the play.
ReplyDeleteMedea's CRAZY
end of story.
OK. I agree that she is clever.. but im not surprised. She has had a history of executing cunning plans in the past- killing her own brother, escaping from her own country, and killing even more people on Jason's rise to power. So not only that she is clever, she is also extremely wicked and sly. I swear that stuff about killing her husband figuratively is exactly what i was thinking when I was looking at your quote, which means i agree w/ what you said. Well I would say any person goes more than a "little" overboard when they decide to kill their own children.. it's either being overly self-centered or mindless. Haha i like how you ended your blog "a divorced woman is no woman at all"- not the case in every divorce but certainly 100% in this particular one.
ReplyDeleteYour discussion of Medea's filicide (killing one's children) elicited some strong responses from your readers. Indeed to modern readers, Medea may seem totally insane, and her behavior may seem "a little overboard" as Soe, the master of understatement, explains. To Greek audiences, her behavior would have been taboo as well. However, many look at this text as a proto-feminist work, introducing some pivotal concepts about female roles and constraints in a patriarchal society. This is an interesting text to reference when we read Kate Chopin's The Awakening.
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