Medea

Seneca’s Medea is a forceful character who dominates the play, speaking a high percentage of the total lines. The first act establishes Medea as a visible and assertive presence, opening with her delivering a long speech in which she lays out her key intention of revenge. In his tragedies, Seneca pioneered dramatic techniques that were heavily influential to subsequent European playwrights (such as Shakespeare), including the use of soliloquies to provide psychological insight into characters and their motivations. In her first speech, Medea uses a soliloquy to give the audience access to her interior world.

When she first appears, Medea invokes a variety of gods and goddesses, and states “now let me curse” (I.12). The action for which she is cursing Jason has already occurred: Seneca begins his play in media res (“in the middle of things”), with key plot events having already taken place. In the time that Seneca was writing, most Romans would have been familiar with a myth that was already centuries old. Beginning after Jason has already broken off his marriage to Medea to marry Creusa also speeds up the pacing of the plot and creates a more consistent tone for the play: Medea is furious right from the very first moment she appears in the text.

Medea’s anger is active, not passive. She makes it clear that she intends to “be the one to kill the victims on the altar” (I.39). Medea’s immediate pull towards action reveals a key aspect of her characterization: She is someone who takes her fate into her own hands and does not shrink from violence. Her intention to enact revenge builds dramatic tension in the plot and situates a key context for the world of the play. Magic and deities are important presences within Medea’s world, and she frequently invokes various gods and mythological figures. However, Medea asks gods and spirits to help her achieve her goals, rather than relying on them to enact justice for her—Medea firmly believes in her own agency and her ability to do what needs to be done.

Medea’s presentation as a bold and active character is strengthened further by her allusions to events that took place earlier in her life (See: Background, “Literary Context: The Myth of Medea”). Medea’s past would have been familiar to Seneca’s audience, hence the allusions to these prior events throughout the play. Pondering these events from her past, Medea reflects that “wounding, murder, death/ […] I did those as a girl” (I.47-49). In these lines, Medea’s recollection of how even as a mere “girl” she was capable of “murder” and other violent acts creates a stark contrast between Medea and Creusa, whom the Chorus will soon praise for beauty and feminine grace. The contrast between the two women suggests that while Creusa conforms to societal expectations for Corinthian women, Medea does not. When Medea commands herself, “Away with feminine fears/Dress up your mind like your own cruel home” (I.42-43, emphasis added), her forswearing of “feminine fears” and vow to “dress up” her mind for violence further emphasizes her defiance of feminine norms.

The idea that Medea already committed violent acts when she was an “innocent” young woman and is therefore ready to take on even more heinous deeds also introduces the theme of A Mature Woman’s Capacity for Revenge. Medea’s rejection of traditional femininity even extends into the experience of motherhood: Medea begins a motif of linking her status as a mother to an increased capacity and appetite for revenge when she states, “now I have given birth, my crimes ought to increase” (I.50). Traditionally, motherhood might be associated with giving and nurturing life, but Medea inverts this connection, arguing that because she has given life, she is also unafraid to take it away.

Medea’s references to her “cruel home” also parody the Greek belief that Colchis was a violent and barbaric place. Despite all of the ways Medea had helped Jason, she was viewed with deep suspicion and consistently treated as an outsider once she arrived in Greece. The theme of Distrust of Foreignness is introduced when Medea reveals that she is well aware of how both she and her homeland are regarded with suspicion. Such suspicions are confirmed slightly later when the Chorus comments on Jason holding “an untamed wife” (I.102) and committing himself to a “barbarian marriage” (I.104). The Chorus’ language dehumanizes Medea by calling her “untamed” and her marriage “barbarian,” depicting her as wild and animalistic. Medea’s foreignness makes the Chorus less sympathetic to her plight, giving them grounds to see her as deserving of her suffering.

Throughout the play, the Chorus functions as a conservative presence that is largely unsympathetic to Medea. Their criticisms and mockery of Medea as a foreign woman contrast with their praise of Creusa, whom they celebrate for “her beauty” which “outshines them [other women] all” (I.94). As a new bride, Creusa is celebrated for what was traditionally valued in a woman—beauty, innocence, fertility, and passivity—in contrast to Medea, who is intelligent, active, and righteously angry.