(Greek Mythology: Culture and Religion Part II)
(Greek Mythology: Culture and Religion Part III)
(Greek Mythology: Culture and Religion Part IV)
Previously, we discussed
Euripides’ portrayal of humanity and divinity and their relation to each other
in Hippolytus. In another
particularly famous play of Euripides, he explores the themes of justice and revenge.
In Medea, after
being told that her husband is abandoning her and their children to marry a
princess, Medea constructs an elaborate plan to kill everyone close to Jason.
In the end, she kills everyone including her children. The ending of the play
feels truly shocking, Medea becomes a murderer and, in her anger, even kills
her children! This seems unbelievably cruel, her children did nothing wrong and
were just victims of their mother’s wrath. In this way, Medea becomes a
completely unsympathetic character as, even though she did hesitate before the
murder, she still harmed many innocent people in order to hurt Jason, the only person
who did do something wrong. It would be expected that an anti-hero like Medea would
be punished but instead she escapes on Helios’ chariot, an oddly happy ending
for a murderer. Of course, this leads to several questions: why would Euripides
choose to end his play with Medea being aided by the gods? What kind of justice
was Euripides describing? Did the Greeks like this story and its ending?
The last question is fairly easy
to answer as the Greeks disliked it – or they liked it less than the other
plays that were performed. This play came last in the City Dionysia, a festival
in which tragedian and comic playwrights competed for the best play which would
win a significant amount of prestige. It coming last means that the other plays
were preferable in many aspects and tells us the basic information that the
play was not that well-received. The Athenians seemed to dislike Medea’s
masculine features and took offence to her committing filicide as this was
apparently a liberty taken by Euripides. While now this portrayal of Medea is arguably
the most famous and is praised for the more feminist portrayal of female character,
this was certainly not the case in 431 BC.
Thus, it becomes more relevant to
question Euripides’ motives, such as why would he write such a controversial play
that would garner this extreme dislike. As with most writers, we cannot say for
sure why they made several decisions, we can only speculate. One reason is that
it was due to the nature of a playwright, tragedians often took myths and
expanded upon them or altered key elements of the play to create more exciting
plays. Euripides similarly altered the plot of Hippolytus in a play referred to as Hippolytus Unveiled which portrayed Phaedra as much more immoral
than his later revised play did. Alternatively, it could be said that Medea
managed to escape because of her family ties. Generally, Helios was regarded as
Medea’s grandfather, Euripides may have been exploring how traditional male
heroes often were saved because of their divine heritage or attributed
successes due to this and so may have placed Medea in a similar situation. As
she is closely related to divinity, she is granted the same privilege that both
male heroes and the divine receive. In the same way, it could be exploring
family bonds, a theme throughout the play. Jason decides to marry Glauce, a
princess, while forsaking his family for a chance a money and power. Medea, who
had been loyal and had forsook her family for Jason, then decides to enact a
plan for revenge. It could be seen as Helios taking pity on Medea for what she
has been through and offering her a new chance at life in Athens, not dealing justice
as he should.
On the other hand, it could be
Euripides questing divine involvement in matters such as justice. It was a
common theme in many plays that the gods would deal out justice at the end and
that would be the conclusion to the play. The ending could be seen as subtly
questioning this divine justice or at least playing with the idea. Firstly,
Medea’s method of escape is through the deus
ex machina, in which a seemingly unsolvable problem is magically solved
through the intervention of something, in this case, it is Helios’ chariot
which lets Medea escape. The unrealistic ending may suggest that relying on the
gods for a miracle may not always be fool-proof or sometimes the gods involved were
not always just. Furthermore, the actual staging of this helps to develop this theory.
Medea’s escape through the flying chariot would have been done using a mechane which was usually reserved for
gods, yet Medea receives similar treatment. This could highlight how the gods
were not entirely just in themselves, they were flawed creatures as were
humans. If we take this theory to be true, it must be noted that Euripides never
suggested the gods should be deprived of their worship or anything radical such
as that, plays would never risk anything as outspoken as that as they were only
meant to be stories and tales.
Lastly, a fairly obvious way to
look at the decidedly unfair ending is that it was not meant to be happy or
fair. This was not a comedy in which celebrations and happiness were the norms
for the endings, this was a tragedy in which deaths and unhappy endings were
common. The point of the play was to be cathartic, people would come out and
feel refreshed and lighter, while at the same time, have received entertainment.
Therefore, it ends with the deaths of the children, Glauce and her father and
Medea hurting Jason as much as possible.
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