58 pages • 1 hour read
EuripidesA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Medea is the daughter of Aietes, king of Colchis, and the granddaughter of Helios, the god of the sun. A princess of Colchis and a powerful witch, Medea helped Jason on his adventures before they married and settled down in Jason’s native Greece.
From Euripides’s day to our own, Medea’s character has been noted for its depth and complexity. In modern times Medea has been received as a prototypical feminist, a woman who identified with razor-sharp precision the unfairness of women’s treatment in her society. This is certainly true to some extent, but Euripides also makes clear that Medea played the role of wife and mother happily and exactly to societal expectations—until the moment Jason divorced her (10-20). It is Jason’s betrayal that radicalizes Medea—or removes the mask to reveal who she always was.
Medea rages against her second-class status as a woman, and in her anger she sheds the roles by which her society defines women: marriage and motherhood. She is rendered unmarried by Jason’s decision to divorce her, but she embraces this status. Early in the play she appeals to Artemis, the virgin goddess of unmarried women, symbolically divesting herself not only of her identity as a married woman but also reverting herself to a virginal state before marriage.
By Euripides
Alcestis
Euripides
Cyclops
Euripides
Electra
Euripides
Hecuba
Euripides
Helen
Euripides
Heracles
Euripides
Hippolytus
Euripides
Ion
Ed. John C. Gilbert, Euripides
Iphigenia in Aulis
Euripides
Orestes
Euripides
The Bacchae
Euripides
Trojan Women
Euripides