Here are some quotes from Medea that may be helpful. All of the
information comes from a paper written by Mindi Corwin in which she
compares Medea to Seth in the novel Beloved in which a slave woman kills
her children.
Chorus when they support Medea (before they learn of her plan)
Flow backward to your sources, sacred rivers,
And let the world's great order be reversed.
It is the thoughts of men that are deceitful,
Their pledges that are loose. (410-414)
Creon, talking to Medea, as she assuages his legitimate fears:
I am afraid of you . . .
You are a clever woman, versed in evil arts
And are angry at having lost your husband's love.
I hear that you are threatening, so they tell me,
To do something against my daughter and Jason
And me too. (281-290)
Creon agrees to allow her to stay a day longer, though he admits that:
. . . by showing mercy I have often been the loser.
Even now I know that I am making a mistake. (349-350)
After she grovels to Creon, she tells the chorus:
Do you think that I would ever have fawned on that man
Unless I had some end to gain or profit in it? (367-369)
Once Medea has secured her escape through Aegeus, she confides her plan to use her children to exact revenge:
And when I have ruined the whole of Jason's house,
I shall leave the land and flee from the murder of my
Dear children, and I shall have done a dreadful deed.
For it is not bearable to be mocked by enemies.
So it must happen. What profit have I in life?
I have no land, no home, no refuge from my pain.
Let no one think me a weak one, feeble-spirited,
A stay at home, but rather just the opposite,
One who can hurt my enemies and help my friends;
For the lives of such persons are most remembered. (795-810)
This speech encompasses many of the themes of the tragedy. Her
alienation provokes drastic action. She exemplifies the male heroic
ethos in that she has to avenge the insult she has been dealt. This
heroic ethos prizes property, honor, and fame as the pinnacle of success.
To wage her personal war of revenge against Jason, she assumes a role of
weakness with a self-deprecating attitude:
[W]e women are what we are-perhaps a little
Worthless; and you men must not be like us in this,
Nor be foolish in return when we are foolish.
Now, I give in, and admit that then I was wrong.
I have come to a better understanding now. (889-893).
His mistake is to be arrogant and therefore incapable of seeing beneath
her words: he takes what she says at face value-the same mistake Creon
makes, and each exemplifies the Greek theme of looking beneath the
surface to the meaning beneath the words, beneath the surface.
The voice of moderation, the Greek concept of avoidance of excess, comes from Medea's old nurse:
How much I fear something will happen!
Great people's tempers are terrible, always
Having their own way, seldom checked,
Dangerous they shift from mood to mood.
How much better to have been accustomed
To live on equal terms with one's neighbors.
I would like to be safe and grow old in a
Humble way. What is moderate sounds best,
Also in practice is best for everyone.
Greatness brings no profit to people.
God indeed, when in anger, brings
Greater ruin to great men's houses. (118-130)
With these lines the nurse condemns the heroic code which promotes
violence through the credo: "Help your friends and hurt your enemies."
In the lines about growing old in comfort and humility, she contrasts
Achilles in the Iliad (Book 9, lines 408-420) when he was forced to make
a choice between long life and glory in battle. The nurse criticizes the
rage that drives heroes to commit atrocities. She prefers humility and
equality to greatness. She reminds us that the temper of the "great"
brings widespread destruction. She implies that she refers not just to
Medea but all people who gain too much power over others, implying that
unchecked authority breeds corruption and brutality.
Euripides portrays Medea as a heroic figure who, through language,
action, and deportment, mirrors "the naked violence of Achilles and the
cold craft of Odysseus" (Knox, Word 300).
At the end of the play, Medea occupies the position usually reserved for
the gods in Greek tragedy: she is suspended above the stage in the place
of the deus ex machina. She is, in her final triumph, aligned with the
gods.