Felicia Ooi; Medea

Medea is an extremely apt example of the epithet “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. After all the help she gave Jason in his quest to obtain the Golden Fleece and saving his life on several occasions, even betraying her father and country, I could sympathize with Medea when Jason decided to remarry another woman of royal birth – the daughter of Creon, King of Corinth at the time. However, that is the extent of my sympathy.

Medea is portrayed as a woman who is very prideful and her most important priority is that of her honor. She is deeply upset when Jason leaves her and this grief drove her to madness, to a rage that was murderous enough to go beyond any natural, human, motherly/wifely instincts that she might have possessed. There is no doubt that Medea is a woman of great cunning and with many skills at her disposal. However, her life is riddled with deaths, all of her own orchestration, from the dismemberment of her half-brother to the death of Pelias, to the deaths of her own children and Creon and his daughter.

Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel that yet again this was in part because of the gods’ intervention in mortal lives. It was after all Aphrodite who caused Medea to fall hopelessly in love with Jason. However, it was Medea herself who chose to exact her revenge on Jason in such a cruel and cold-blooded manner that involved the deaths of her own innocent children. All though she does show some regret and indecision at killing her own children, she ends up choosing revenge over her children and this makes Medea an extremely vicious character, even by Greek tragedy standards.