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andaisq · 2 years

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the most wretched of women

"I loved my children," she weeps. "You have to believe me, I loved my children."

Whether or not Medea loved her children is not the subject under debate.

"What is under debate?" asks Jason.

Why she butchered them.

"We'd like to return to the question of whether our mother loved us," chorus the twins.

"I loved them," Medea wails.

"Third person, past tense," the first boy mutters. "Cool," mutters the second.

Order!

Good.

We open on a nurse, as Medea wails her maledictions. Do we have a nurse?

"No."

This is a shambles. Fine. The nurse explains the situation: Jason, best beloved by Medea, has abandoned her marriage bed to hop into another: that of Creusa, princess of Corinth.

"Uncharitable," Jason objects.

It's how the nurse puts it. Then the couple's sons arrive, accompanied by their tutor – do we have a tutor –

"No."

– absurd. The tutor states that Medea will be exiled with her sons.

"Would've been nice," one boy says brightly. "A trip with Mom," the other adds.

"Must you?" she sobs.

I will have order!

The nurse warns that Medea is in foul mood, and for the boys to avoid her as best they can.

"Which wasn't well." "Mom has the ear of a bat and the eye of a hawk." "Possibly literally." "She saw us and started screaming – not, to be clear, totally unprecedented."

"I was at my wits' end."

"Your wits were never the problem," Jason mutters.

"Yours were," chirp the boys.

Jason sighs. "No respect."

The Chorus enters.

"We heard Medea's suffering," the women intone, "and we wanted to help. We wanted to soothe her pain."

Do you?

"No."

"I left my home and found the women of Corinth awaiting," Medea says. "I spoke to them of my pain – our shared pain, as women."

"Many women manage to live their lives without murder," observes a son.

"We endorsed her desire for revenge," the women say solemnly. "What woman would not?"

Enter Creon, king of Corinth and father to Jason's new bride. ...we don't have a Creon?

"No."

Jesus.

Creon summarily exiles Medea; he doesn't know what her plans are, but he knows she's up to something bad.

"I begged him to exile me tomorrow, and give me time to set my affairs in order," Medea says. "To make arrangements, if not for my own safety, then for my children."

"We know how that worked out," mutter her children.

Creon concedes, though he knows he'll regret it. Medea is given until sunrise for a reprieve.

"I turned to the crowd," says Medea coolly. "Explained my plans: to murder Jason, and his princess, and her father, all together."

(Pause.

There's a noteworthy bit here. When Medea states her intention to murder three people – line 453, if you're following at home – her only hesitation is the following: θανοῦσα θήσω τοῖς ἐμοῖς ἐχθροῖς γέλων. "[If I am not clever] I will die, and my enemies would laugh."

That's interesting.

Moving on.)

Plotting three murders in broad daylight. Risky.

"They're only a Chorus. They couldn't stop me."

"Indeed, we sang of the honor Medea would bring us," intones the Chorus, "by taking vengeance on her wretched lover. We were fools."

Enter Jason.

"I explained to Medea that she was being selfish," Jason says. "That had she not been so rash, so fickle, we would all have gained from my marriage to Creusa."

Medea laughs bitterly. "And I explained my position: that of a woman who had sacrificed everything, done the unforgivable time and time again, alienated everyone who had ever loved her or ever would, for the sake of one man. I butchered my baby brother for you, Jason. I slit his throat and threw pieces of him over the side of the Argo so that my father's ships would slow to catch his organs in their fishing nets, so they could give him a proper burial. I tricked three beautiful girls into slaughtering their royal father and making him into a stew. No one but you would ever have me. We were made for each other, Jason."

"I paid you back a dozen times," Jason insists. "I brought you to Greece from your barbarian homeland. You were able to make a name for yourself as a brilliant witch – fame that you could capitalize on, if you weren't so stubbornly committed to tying me down. And just because I was fucking Creusa instead of you, you thought I was betraying you! I was going to make us rich!"

"That makes sense," says the Chorus.

"What are you talking about?" Medea asks wildly.

Enter Aegeus.

"We don't have an Aegeus," Medea snaps. "And I'm not done! Were you not just telling me that in killing him I'd restore honor to all womankind?"

A murmur of assent from the Chorus.

Medea grips her head in both hands. "Then – what makes sense about what he's saying? He calls my home barbarous, he says I should capitalize on my fame instead of tying him down, he says cheating isn't a betrayal if it makes him rich?! What the fuck are you talking about, that makes sense?!"

The Chorus hesitates.

"It does seem strange," says one chorister. She's shushed by the rest.

Enter Aegeus. He says that he visited the Oracle at Delphi to find a cure for his infertility.

"Oh, yes, and I told him I'd help him if he provided me safe harbor," Medea says. "And – and then I decided. Then I knew. That I had to kill them. My sons."

"Now who doesn't make sense?" asks one son. "Walk us through your process here, Mom," says the other.

"I –" Medea hesitates. "What do you want me to say? I had to hurt him. As badly as I possibly could."

The next scene -

The secondborn speaks up. "Dad comes in, you pretend to love him again and tell us to deliver our new stepmother a beautiful gown and tiara. Let's jump to lines 902-903, though. You call us out to embrace our father, and – you hesitate. O my children, will you continue to embrace me like this as long as you live?" "We didn't," adds the firstborn.

Medea's lips thin. "A moment of weakness."

"You have a lot of them." "In fact, over the course of the next few scenes you're downright schizophrenic." "Five times." "Five times you change your mind."

"I'm a weak person," Medea grits out. "It comes of being a woman."

Yes, there's a recurring thread of virulent Athenian sexism throughout the work, but that really isn't it.

"Maybe you just kept noticing –" "– over and over –" "– that you didn't have a reason?"

"I had to hurt him," Medea insists.

The children laugh. "Would stealing his children really hurt him that much less than murdering them?" "Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face."

(If I may interject.

Here's where my aside earlier comes into play. At the beginning of her final face/heel turn, Medea says: καίτοι τί πάσχω; βούλομαι γέλωτ᾽ ὀφλεῖν ἐχθροὺς μεθεῖσα τοὺς ἐμοὺς ἀζημίους. "But what is this? Do I wish to suffer the mockery of those I despise?"

Medea's greatest fear is laughter.

She must kill Creusa, or she'll be laughed at. She must kill her sons, or she'll be laughed at. I can't help but think of Carrie, the prom dress and the pig's blood and everyone laughing, laughing, laughing…

I have a friend who says that tragedy and horror are in many ways the same thing, that the real and fundamental difference is that horror is unreal. Horror could never happen to you; tragedy is something that happens every day.

Medea's story is both tragedy and horror. The people who love you could leave. Stop loving you. Abandon you, throw you to the wolves. It happens every day. It is a tragedy, what happens to Medea. But Medea is, herself, the horror. She takes what happened to her and twists it, shatters it, makes it a monster and sets the monster loose. All so that no one can laugh at her.

No one is laughing now.

No one will ever laugh at Medea.

Is that what she wanted?

...back to the action.)

Next scene. The Chorus mourns the children. Then they mourn for Creusa. Then they mourn for Jason. Then they mourn for Medea.

The Chorus shifts uncomfortably. Medea glares at them.

The Tutor returns with the boys. He tells Medea that the gift was well received, and the boys will be accepted by their new stepmother and raised alongside her own children.

Medea spits on the ground. "And so I freeze my heart. I must kill them."

As the boys mentioned, you change your mind five times. Back to the Chorus, which bemoans childbirth in general.

One member of the Chorus, the one who broke ranks before, stomps her foot. "I can't believe this! This – this isn't about fundamental womanhood, she's murdering her fucking kids! I –"

"Am I not a woman," Medea hisses. The Chorus nods.

"It doesn't matter that you’re a woman if you're murdering your fucking kids!" the lone chorister insists.

Order.

A messenger tells Medea of the gruesome death of Creusa and her father.

The boys' eyes are hollow. "And she takes her blade in hand." "And she comes through the door." "And she hunts us down." "And..."

The Chorus wails.

The lone chorister breaks. "I can't take this! I'll – I -"

A single member of the Chorus does, actually, say that she will stop this, when she hears the boys cry out.

"Yes! I – I have to stop her!"

The Chorus' hands grab her wrists, her ankles. She is held in place.

She does not move.

"Why?" she whispers, going suddenly slack.

Throughout the play, the Chorus serves to contextualize events. They chide Jason for abandoning his bride. They agree with Medea that what has been done to her is beyond the pale, and encourage her to take revenge on Jason. Once she talks about her plan to slaughter her children as well, they turn to naysayers, pleading with her not to do it. But, crucially, they can't do anything about it. Medea ignores them. Jason ignores them. They cannot influence events; they can only watch, and speak, and cry.

"I arrive at the house, sword in hand," Jason says dully.

"I exit, with my sons' bodies, in a chariot drawn by dragons," Medea says. "A gift from my divine father, Helios. I will bury the children myself; never again will Jason see them, or touch their skin."

"Thus the gods approve this wretched act," says the Chorus. The lone chorister is, by this point, weeping.

The pair snipe at each other pointlessly.

The play concludes with Medea flying away, and Jason leaving the stage. A final stanza, generally agreed to be an interpolation by a later, lesser playwright, declares: πολλῶν ταμίας Ζεὺς ἐν Ὀλύμπῳ, πολλὰ δ᾽ ἀέλπτως κραίνουσι θεοί: καὶ τὰ δοκηθέντ᾽ οὐκ ἐτελέσθη, τῶν δ᾽ ἀδοκήτων πόρον ηὗρε θεός. τοιόνδ᾽ ἀπέβη τόδε πρᾶγμα. "Many things Zeus has in Olympus, many are the unexpected things that come to pass; what men expect is not what happens, but the gods bring about something else. Such is the outcome of this story."

You might ask yourself... what the fuck?

Medea murders her children. No one does anything about it; no one can do anything about it. She comes out via the Machinus, the part of the stage reserved for the gods, riding a chariot given to her by the gods, tacit evidence of their approval – not only that, she makes it explicit. The gods care less about her murdering her own innocent children than they do about Jason jilting her.

It's not a satisfying ending by any means. But how could you possibly end a play like this? A play where human beings make each other suffer in the worst ways possible, for the sake of their own worst selves. A play where the only characters we don't loathe are the Chorus, incapable of action, and a pair of children who don't even speak in the original text until they're being murdered.

Maybe the only way to end it is not to end it.

To say that, ultimately, life goes on, no matter what atrocity has just occurred. No matter that the gods love best those who do evil; no matter that a man's life has been ruined, even if it was earned. No matter that Medea has slaughtered her children, that the king is dead, that everything will stay broken.

The thing about life is that it keeps happening until it doesn't.

#medea #euripedes #analysis #short story #...sort of #this is another piece from the same class as ''ashes to ashes again'' and the piece ''white hair sends black hair away'' on my ao3 #it... might not make a ton of sense if you haven't read medea #on the other hand it might not make a ton more sense if you have

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