Medea
Euripides
Why read it? This play is the ultimate story of the mythological woman who loved and was scorned.
Falling in love with Jason, Medea helps him to steal the Golden Fleece and to murder her brother to delay their pursuers. She persuaded the three daughters of Jason's enemy Pelias that she could rejuvenate him if they would cut him in pieces, which they did and Jason's argonauts captured the city. Although he owed most of his success to her, Jason later repudiates her in order to marry Glauce, daughter of Creon. Medea murders her two children by Jason and escapes in a chariot drawn by winged serpents to Athens, where she marries Aegeus.
Euripides attacked, at least by implication, many attitudes accepted by the Athenians, including the subordinate position of women (Alcestis) and foreign women in particular (Medea). In Medea, the sharp-tongued heroine makes his criticism of the treatment of women abundantly clear. He reduced tragic figures to human proportions.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment