Medea is quite different from the works we have read because of the power given to the female figure, Medea, as well as the important role the Chorus of women plays. Similar to how others think Clytemnestra is manly in Agamemnon, Medea shows characteristics that were thought to be manlike at the time, such as her aggressiveness and potency. Clytemnestra and Medea also use language very cunningly to realize their goals. For example, Clytemnestra receives her husband with great welcome, as if to present a pretense of joy, and Medea convinces Jason that she has turned from her foolish anger and realized his good purpose to ensure their sons a bright future. But their words are empty, for their underlying intentions involve murder. Medea is more extreme to me in her desire for revenge, however, because she goes so far to kill her own children. Even though she has moments of weakness and indecision as to whether she should kill her children or take them with her to Athens, when she thinks of Jason’s unfaithfulness, she is fully resolved to continue her schemes again.
I think it was noteworthy that Jason slanders her with being a foreigner, connecting her crimes to her origins. He says, “I was mad before, when I brought you from your palace in a land of savages into a Greek home-you, a living curse, already a traitor both to your father and your native land” (179). Jason is beyond angry at this point, but I don’t think that excuses him from saying this, for Medea committed those crimes for his sake. By condemning her for killing her brother and deceiving her homeland, he envelopes the misunderstanding that spans the whole play-that he does not appreciate her full devotion to him in the past, evident in his marriage to Creon’s daughter.
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