Medea

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 49

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Summary

Background

Act Summaries & Analyses

Act I

Act II

Act III

Act IV

Act V

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Insatiable Desire for Revenge

The desire for revenge is the most visible and dominant theme in the play. While it is left ambiguous as to whether or not Medea’s need for vengeance is justified, Seneca shows that revenge never truly brings peace, but rather begets the desire for even more revenge. Medea’s longing for revenge is clear almost as soon as she begins to speak: she implores, “Come to me now, O vengeful Furies, punishers of sinners” (I.13). Importantly, while Medea repeatedly invokes spirits and divine forces to assist her in her quest for vengeance, she sees herself as having the agency and responsibility to carry out revenge herself. As she notes, “I will be the one to kill the victims on the altar” (I.39).

Medea’s desire for revenge, and sense of why she is justified in seeking it, is rooted in the injustice of Jason abandoning her after she has made so many sacrifices in order to be with him. As she bitterly reminds Jason, “For you I gave up my kingdom, my father, my brother/My shame” (III.488). Medea insists that she wants vengeance no matter what the cost may be, and she is unconvinced by the Nurse’s attempts to dissuade her to endure her suffering without lashing out. The repeated exchanges between Medea and the Nurse in the first two acts of the play only serve to cement Medea’s commitment to bloody revenge, but they do introduce an ethical debate into the play regarding whether or not there are cases where seeking revenge may be justified. Medea’s argument for seeking vengeance may be particularly compelling because it is clear that no one else is going to intercede on her behalf: because she is a foreigner, no one in Corinth seems to have any sympathy for Medea, and they simply want to cast her aside. Medea is seeking vengeance not just for Jason’s betrayal, but for the lack of gratitude and respect she has been shown. As a princess, Medea also feels entitled to not be treated like someone who can be used and thrown away.

While Medea may make a legitimate case for why she deserves revenge, it does not seem to give her satisfaction until she commits her most extreme act. Medea initially states, “peace can only be mine/If I see everything ruined along with me” (III. 426-427). Medea’s plan to kill Creusa succeeds and even achieves more destruction than she was hoping for, since Creon also dies and the palace catches on fire. However, Medea almost immediately finds herself unsatisfied and longs for greater destruction. She reflects, “this is a tiny fraction of your triumph” (V.895). Medea’s desire for vengeance causes her to dream up a plan that horrifies her and creates psychological turmoil within her. Rather than giving her peace, Medea’s desire for revenge leaves her in a state where “[her] double inclination tears [her] apart” (V.939), leaving her hesitant and conflicted about her own actions. After she kills her first son, Medea still needs to quench her desire for vengeance, and becomes fixated on killing the second child while Jason watches. After that, she finds herself reasoning, “Although I shall kill two/The number is too small to satisfy my pain” (V.1010-1011). Medea’s acknowledgement that even killing her own children is not enough “to satisfy [her] pain” makes it explicit that Medea’s horrible crimes still do not truly bring her peace. She leaves the play seemingly triumphant but likely without any lasting comfort, calling into question the efficacy of vengeance.

A Mature Woman's Capacity for Violence

Medea began committing acts of violence as a young girl, motivated by her love for Jason and her desire to help him. During the action of the play, Medea comments on her history of criminal actions and compares it to the plans she hatches as an older woman who has become a wife and mother. Medea subverts gender expectations by arguing that a mature woman has a greater affinity and capacity for violent acts: rather than becoming calmer and wiser, she has become more reckless with age, and rather than becoming more nurturing through motherhood, she has become fiercer. Medea establishes a contrast between her initial acts of violence and what she is capable of as an older woman, noting that her first acts of violence were motivated by good intentions. She explains, “When I did this/I was not even angry; I was driven by painful love” (II.134-135). When she engineered the deaths of her brother and of King Pelias, Medea was acting out of pragmatism and love for Jason, not malice. Indeed, her visions of her brother’s ghost hint that Medea may experience guilt for that crime. Now that Medea is actually acting out of rage, she is willing and able to go far beyond her initial crimes. Her purpose is not just death, but engendering as much pain as possible.

Medea’s status as a mother and her ability to commit violent acts intersect in order to subvert expectations and foreshadow how she will eventually kill her own children. Becoming a mother is traditionally associated with generating new life and potentially nurturing and protecting that life, but Medea argues that, after becoming a mother, she is more capable than ever of destroying life. She argues, “Now I have given birth, my crimes ought to increase” (I.50, emphasis added). As a mother, Medea has gained the ability to wreak more havoc than ever because she has a new weapon in her arsenal: she can do the one thing no one thinks she is capable of, and torture Jason in his most vulnerable place. Medea has already killed a close family member, but she can now kill even more innocent and vulnerable victims.

Finally, not only does Medea have the possibility of doing a new kind of heinous deed—she also has the daring and boldness to carry it out. Medea’s experiences have made her more bold, leading her to compare her newfound daring and “rage” to her more childish emotions and abilities in youth: “How could my childish hands/Do something truly great? Could the rage of a girl do this?” (V.908-909, emphasis added). The new ferocity that she achieves as a mother and a mature woman leaves Medea able to taunt Jason at the end of the play, juxtaposing herself with the innocent young princess he was trying to marry: “Now, proud man, go off and marry virgins/Leave mothers alone” (V.1006-1007). In defying expectations surrounding femininity and motherhood, Medea is able to take her revenge like a male Greek hero.

Distrust of Foreignness

Throughout the play, Creon and the Chorus show a consistent mistrust of Medea, and of anything foreign in general. Their perspective is rooted in their belief that introducing people from different cultures into new societies will lead to chaos. Ironically, their fears are proven to be correct, but only because they exclude and alienate Medea.

Medea hails from the remote kingdom of Colchis, which was considered by Greeks to be a strange and potentially barbaric place. Medea references these assumptions at the start of the play when she describes “all the horrors witnessed back at home by the Black Sea” (I.44). Even though Medea has lived in Greece for some time and has had children with her Greek husband, she is still viewed with suspicion and mistrust by her community. The Chorus refers to Jason’s “barbarian marriage” (I.104) and reflects that he is lucky to be now marrying a Corinthian woman, while Creon refers to “Medea, poisonous child of Colchian Aeetes” (II.179). These attitudes are especially unfair because, as Medea points out, she has worked hard and made huge personal sacrifices in order to help the Greek cause. Without her, Jason and many other Greek heroes would have perished. Medea should really be a national hero herself, but as a foreigner and a woman, no one gives her any credit.

The Chorus not only mistrusts Medea individually, but laments any sort of contact between foreign places and cultures. They complain, “the world was once divided into strict partitions/But those were broken by the pinewood ship” (II.335-336) and express their fear that now “all boundaries are gone” (II.369). Medea’s sentence of exile represents not just a punishment, but a desire to purge foreign influences from Corinth. Medea’s pleas that she has nowhere to go fall on deaf ears because the Corinthians simply want her gone. Creon and the Corinthian Chorus feel uneasy and suspicious about Medea, and their fears are ultimately proven correct when she wreaks havoc on the city by killing the King and his daughter. However, they overlook the irony that they need to be afraid of Medea because they always mistreated her: if they had acknowledged her contributions and treated her as an equal, Medea would likely have used her immense powers to protect them rather than turning her force against them.