Stereotype and Reversal in Euripides' 'Medea'

Stereotype and Reversal in Euripides' 'Medea'
Author(s): Shirley A. Barlow

Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Oct., 1989), pp. 158-171
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
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Greece & Rome, Vol. xxxvi, No. 2, October 1989
STEREOTYPE AND REVERSAL IN EURIPIDES' MEDEA
By SHIRLEY A. BARLOW
The plot of the Medea concerns infidelity, a woman discarded by her

husband for another younger woman and a more 'suitable' match.
Infidelity by the husband was not an unusual occurrence amid the
material of Greek myths. In Sophocles' play The Women of Trachis
the heroine Deianeira, and wife of Heracles, must reluctantly take
into her household Iole, a beautiful slave-girl whom her husband has
taken as his concubine. Although she is made to give voice to her
regret and to her jealousy, she has no thought of harming the girl or
her husband. That Heracles is finally injured is not the result of an
intentional act of revenge on her part but a mistake set in train by the
malevolence of someone else.
When Andromache in Euripides' Andromache - legendary model of
wife and mother throughout antiquity - describes her happy marriage
with Hector she explains that she, far from rebelling at his infidelities,
even took upon herself the task of nursing and bringing up his
illegitimate children.' This may of course be Euripides going slightly
'over the top', but I think there is little doubt that Deianeira and
Andromache are in these respects feminine stereotypes of gentle,
submissive womanhood. Deianeira, I think, is implicitly contrasted
with Clytemnestra in this respect.2 And Andromache is known
throughout the ancient world as a paradigm of the perfect wife.3
Medea is different and her situation is worse than that of these
'established' wives, for whereas Deianeira and Andromache were
never ousted from their places in the home, Medea has to suffer just
that. Moreover she has the added disadvantage that she is a foreigner
and has been required to cede her position to a Greek woman of
superior social status.4
Euripides shows us in the play a woman unable to accept the fact of
Jason's unfaithfulness. She is a woman, moreover, who simply
refuses any longer to accept - at any rate Greek - female stereotypes
unless to use them with calculation to gain her own immediate ends.
Of course, the particular circumstances to some degree make her case
special. Euripides does not disguise totally the fact that she is a
foreigner and a sorceress with magic talents, but these I think as
much as being items in the original myth are also the author's get-
outs - loop-holes in case the action turns out to be too controversial
for the audience to stomach. I would argue that they are mostly
immaterial factors in the dramatist's main delineation of human

STEREOTYPE AND REVERSAL IN EURIPIDES' MEDEA 159
action as it unfolds in the central, crucial parts of the play. In these

parts, I would submit, we largely forget that Medea is a foreigner, a
sorceress, or one whose marital status may be in doubt. I, therefore,
totally disagree here with Denys Page who writes in the preface to his
edition, 'because she was a foreigner she could kill her children,
because she was a witch she could escape in a magic chariot'.5 The
latter half of the sentence may be partly true but when Jason exclaims
at the end of the play, 'No Greek woman would have done this',6 far
from supporting Page's line, I would argue that we are meant to
think, 'But she could have - any woman could have'.
What we fix on in the central part of the play is that Medea is a
woman subject to the same environment and circumstances as any
Greek woman. Indeed, she makes common cause with the Greek
women of the chorus and asks for their help and sympathy. And they
give it, which is an important thing to note.' But she differs from
them and by implication the general run of Greek women in that she
will not acquiesce in her circumstances and she will not, therefore,
stay in the labelled pigeon-hole into which society has put her.
When at 214ff. Medea makes her great speech to the women of
Corinth she spends the central part of it defining the lot of women in
general in comparison to the lot of men and, of course, unfavourably.
Through her speech Euripides the author is no doubt thinking of the
women of Athens in his own day, but there are undoubted resonances
of relevance for women through the ages.
Women, she says, are restricted in their marriages, without rights
of their own. Husbands have complete physical control of their
wives8 who do not for their part have the right to opt out of a
marriage if things go wrong.9 Women do not have the same outlets of
relief when things do go wrong, whereas men have the freedom to go
outside the house to talk with and meet with people.'0 Women do not
have this freedom, being confined to domestic life indoors and being
totally dependent on the one person into whose keeping they are
committed - their husband." The additional ignominy for them in all
this is that they are expected by men to like it and to feel privileged in
having a trouble-free life:
They (i.e. men) say of us that we live a danger-free life at home while they do the
fighting in battle. They are idiots. I would rather stand in the front line of battle
three times than bear one child. (248-9)
It is with this violent assertion (a remarkable utterance for a

woman to make by any standards in any time, no less at the beginning
of the Peloponnesian War) that Medea dissociates herself not just
with women's stereotypes as they are commonly accepted by women

160 STEREOTYPE AND REVERSAL IN EURIPIDES' MEDEA
as well as men, but more important from the myths and fictions that
men particularly propagate about women - AEyovaL she specifically
says at 248. After the v-v4pin 244 and the masculine ot'8 in 249 this
must refer to men only.
Much of this play is to be about men's images of women and how
these images measure up to reality in the shape of this one woman
Medea who stands far outside the stereotypes and is also not above
showing her ultimate contempt for them by manipulating them to
suit her own ends. For this is a woman who is aware of more than just
the fact that she suffers an injustice. She is aware of root causes
beyond herself. She is capable of analysing the behaviour of others
and she can diagnose how they will act in reaction to her own
calculated movements. She is clever, articulate, and above all self-
aware.'2 In this sense she is in a different class from, say, Sophocles'
Deianeira who suffers infidelity from her husband, who herself feels
deeply but who is not portrayed either with this shrewd diagnostic
power or with the inclination to rebel from her allotted role of home-
loving and dutiful wife.
This bold statement by Medea so early in the play dissociating
herself from the stereotype of women held by men, and her expressed
wish that she might reverse the roles with ease, warns the audience
against all the familiar labels usually attached to men and to women.
Women are expected to be domestic creatures, submissive, peaceful,
and instruments rather than the initiators of action. Men are held to
be adventurous, dominant, aggressive, and to be agents of action.
Medea for all that her motivation may spring from domestic causes is
to reverse these stereotypes. And indeed her words at 248-9 (her
preference for battle) turn out to be prophetic, for after the scene
with Creon she goes on to outline her plans of active revenge to the
Chorus. Now she has entered battle in a sense and she will shortly
turn her back, on her children's welfare. Discarded now is the
wheedling, thebegging, and the flattery - feminine arts which she has
calculatedly used with advantage upon the reluctant Creon in gaining
an extra day in the country - she boasts that he has been stupid
enough to fall for them - and we see her in other, in her true? (we may
wonder) - colours - prepared to kill rather than be laughed at by her
enemies. 'This is the day', she says, 'on which I will reduce three of
my enemies to corpses - the father, the girl, and my husband.' " She
then proceeds in calm, logical fashion to discuss the possible modes
of their death including that of killing them face to face with a sword
herself if necessary. Her calmness is all the more remarkable after the
Nurse's attempts in the opening scene to prepare us for a tearful, near
hysterical woman (24ff., 59ff., 98ff.).

STEREOTYPEAND REVERSALIN EURIPIDES' MEDEA 161
Where is the submissive feminine stereotype now? It is in this part

of the play that we see Medea in a new guise - although after 248-9 it
should not surprise us - i.e. in a heroic mould more usually but not
always (at least in Sophocles) associated with men than with women
since Homer's male characters typified the heroic spirit in the first
place. B.M.W. Knox compares her with Homer's Achilles and
Odysseus, and above all Sophocles' Ajax, that paradigm of ancient
heroic male values'4 who similarly sought to annihilate his enemies.
The resemblances between the Ajax and the Medea are particularly
close,'s but I would argue that Heracles is a further example of that
heroic spirit which baulks at nothing to rid the world of enemies,
whether they be personal ones or not. And indeed the powerful
compound epithet KahhLVLKOs,
'gloriously triumphant', used of Her-
acles in Greek lyric and in Euripides' Heracles is used of Medea, as we
shall see later.16
Medea shows all the firm resolve and daring associated with these
great male heroes: she is concerned with TL/7, 'honour', with
3ltoS (810), 'glory'; she is concerned at humiliation by
EVKAEEKTacT770
her enemies (20, 26, 603, 1354), and determined to go to extreme
lengths, including her own death if necessary, that her enemies may
not laugh at her (383ff.). The language she uses is that of ultimate
daring and courage:
7oA/l98)6 ELtL7TP7
p9rT KaprEpOV (394)
I shall proceed to the staunch extremes of daring
vvv iycovEdvvxlas (403)
Now is the trialof high courage.'7
Her concern with broken oaths is surely not as Page says 'childish
surprise at falsehoods and broken promises'1 but in the great
masculineheroic traditionof angeragainstinsult and impeachmentof
honour. Ajax'sanger at what he regardsas the treacheryof Agamem-
non and Odysseus has not been regarded as 'childish surprise' nor
Achilles' angerat Agamemnon'sinjuryto him in the Iliad.
It is, therefore,exactly appropriatethat the Chorusafter the speech
in which Medea resolves to kill her enemies in heroic vein, should
commentupon the reversalof male/femalestereotypes(410-30):
The streamsof sacredriversflow backwardsand justice and
The orderof all things is reversed.It is mento
Whom treacherynow belongs and faith vowed by men in
The name of the gods is no longer valid. Legends will
Changedirectionto give my life glory, and honour
Comes to the female sex. Women shall no longer be
The subjectof slanderousrumour.

162 STEREOTYPEAND REVERSALIN EURIPIDES' MEDEA
The songs of singers of old shall no longer harp on
My unfaithfulness. It was not to our minds that
Apollo, lord of melody, granted the heavenly song with
Its lyre accompaniment. Otherwise we would have
Replied to the race of men with our own hymns of
Praise. For the long passage of time has as much to
Tell of our own destiny as of theirs.
Men have propagated fictions about women for centuries just as

Medea said they had in 248-9. And just as it is implied they were
wrong there in misjudging women's capacities and inclinations, so
they are said to be wrong here in attributing all the glory to
themselves. For as the Chorus suggest, it may be that it is women
rather than men who are prone to fidelity and commitment to their
oaths, women who are as capable as men of acting to redress their
wrongs. Medea will show that this is so.
It is interesting that in Medea's confrontation with Jason she
argues that she played as prominent a role as he in getting the Golden
Fleece. It was she who slew the snake guarding it and she who slew
Pelias to remove the opposition.19 The implication is - does she not
deserve the name hero as much as he? She was loyal to him and
he met that loyalty with betrayal. This just follows the theme
of the preceding Chorus in which traditional roles are reversed. So
she has already broken the mould labelled 'Women' created by men
and taken on the kind of role more usually associated with the great
male heroes of old and she will now break it again in her heroic
revenge.
What strikes me about all this is the apparent effortless ease with
which Medea has accomplished and is now planning action. She
seems at this point to have no difficulty in assuming the role of hero
or, if you prefer, to show this heroic innate part of her nature. She has
killed before and she will kill again without a second thought. There is
drive and resolve in her determination to avenge and to preserve her
own honour and avoid humiliation. All heroic traits.
But this ease is not to last as we shall see. At first it looks as if it is
and Medea evolves stage two of her plan with a triumphant speech
after the Aegeus scene when Aegeus agrees to give her a refuge later
in Athens. Even her new decision to kill her own children is made on
the wave of this triumph and with high unclouded resolve:
God, and God's daughter, justice, and light of Helius! (764)

Now, friends, has come the time of my triumph over
My enemies, and now my foot is on the road.
Now I am confident they will pay the penalty.

I weep to think of what a deed I have to do (791)
Next after that; for I shall kill my own children.
My children, there is none who can give them safety.
And when I have ruined the whole of Jason's house
I shall leave the land and flee from the murder of my
Dear children, and I shall have done a dreadful deed.
For it is not bearable to be mocked by enemies.
Let no one think me a weak one, feeble-spirited, (807)

A stay-at-home, but rather just the opposite,
One who can hurt my enemies and help my friends;
For the lives of such persons are most remembered.
(Translated by R. Warner)
The heroic code again: damage to enemies, help to friends: a wish for
posthumous fame by deeds and an epithet KaAAVLKosoften used in
association with conquering heroes such as Heracles.20 Buoyed up by
the confidence of refuge Aegeus has given her, Medea pushes her
revenge one stage further to the ultimate murder. But this time she
does not have the Chorus' support; 'I forbid you to do this thing' is
what they say at 813.
Medea is impervious and prepares for her scene with Jason in
which she will feign repentance. Here she manipulates again with
consummate ease the stereotyped view which Jason, and who knows
how many other non-fictional men, have or have had of women,
namely that they are a) essentially malleable, b) foolish, c) emotional,
d) fearful, e) self-deprecating, f) prone to ask favours or forgiveness.
The language of her speech shows that she is playing upon precisely
these assumptions which will govern Jason's reaction:
7t
fXEAla, p aivopiaL
TOL JOUVAEOULV
KaLUSvuIEVavW EU; (873-4)
7
Fool that I am. I must be made to set myself against those who are planning for my
good.
OVK draaAax0rotaLoat
Ov/ov; OEWV KaAwS;
7TOPLSdOvrWV (878-9)
rL7TadXW,
Shall I not give up my anger? What is the matter with me when the gods after all are
making good provision?
7a7 4vvo-quau'a0'fk4qvifovAtav
XovUaaKat'/uiT-qv
7oAA7?v q
OvpiovUdEvO (882-3)
When I thought about these things I saw that I had shown great lack of sense and
that all my strong feeling was pointless.

vv0ovvEiTaww,oawpOVELV?/o1
0OKEL9
-q0 , y'S' Opwv
r6' k_7vpoaAa/c
7r'
Xpv ,LEELVaL r7W
rwvSE
v fovAEvlLdrwv (884-6)
.
I agree with you now. You seem to me to have shown sense in making this other
alliance in addition to me. It was I who was without sense when all the time I should
have shared in these plans of yours.
dAA' 9Ua1Ev oov Ea?uEV,o0K KaKdv,

' OVKOVV Epwo
yvvaLKE9 KaKOL9,
XpTva ooLovaOaL
ov', Vq7TL
TvLrrELVELV aVrT'L
KaL'aaLEv
V)TLWroV.
KaKw9gpovE7v
7TaptLtkEaOa,
T6OT, IAX -ra'E

aELVOVvvv 3E/3'OAEvpaL (889-92)
Well, we women are what we are, - I won't say inferior.But you should not be like
us in this nor tradefoolishnessfor foolishness.I give in and admit that I was wrong
then but I have come to a betterunderstandingnow.
It is designedly ironic that Medea should appearto Jason as this

extreme feminine stereotype at the very point where she has really
turned her backon such stereotypesas shown by her last solo speech.
There she was not malleablebut rigid in her resolve, not foolish but
very clever, not emotive but calculatingand logical, not fearful but
fearless in her courage, set not on forgivenessbut revenge. But that
irony is not enough for the dramatist.Things do not end there or
emerge quite so simply. Might it not be that Medea has assumedher
heroic role a little too confidently?Are the feminine stereotypesreally
quite so easy to discard?Is not Medea's contemptuousmanipulation
of them courtingdangerfor herself?
It is when Medea begins to contemplatein depth as she sees and
feels their physical presence before her what it will mean to kill her
children that we see this very contemptrecoilingon her own head. It
is striking irony that the speech at 1021ff. completely dominatedby
thoughts of her childrenshould follow her calculatedscorn of Jason's
assumptions about women. For this speech shows now another
reversal, a reversal that reveals Medea with some of those very
vulnerable qualities she has just falsely assumed. For in relation to
her children at least, if not to Jason, she is uncertain, fearful,
emotional, aware of her own vulnerability and wrong. And these
qualities war with those other more resolved and heroic traits
revealedalready.
In fact the soliloquy shows that the ease with which Medea had
earlierdemonstratedher scorn of feminine stereotypesby manipulat-
ing them to suit her own ends (p. 163), and the easewith which she had
assumeda heroicguise intent upon daringrevenge(p. 162) cannotlast.

Reversal is in store, for there is no ease in this speech where feminine

instinct and heroic will clash - only agonizing difficulty - because for
the first time the reality which may lie behind a stereotype - in this
case a basic feminine instinct to love one's own - confronts her
through her children's physical presence and proves itself such a
power within her own nature that, although it finally loses the battle
with her heroic resolve, its persistent presence as an irreducible
element in her make-up ensures that any future happiness is wrecked
and that her functioning as a natural and humane being is now for
ever out of the question.
This speech which is important because for the first time in the
play it shows a Medea who is not posturing is also central to turning
the play into a tragedy. Medea's full realization of what the children's
loss will mean to her is tragic and so is her recognition at its
conclusion (1078-80) that in spite of that realization she will be
unable temperamentally to do anything to avert it.
It runs as follows:
Tutor. You are not the first person to have been separated from your children.
People should take their misfortunes with equanimity.
Medea. I shall do this. But go inside and prepare what the children need for the day.
O my children, children, you have a city and a home in which you will live but
only when you have left me behind, poor wretch, and you will always be deprived of
your mother. And I shall go as an exile to another country before I could assist you
and see you happy, before I could perform purifying rites, honour your wives, adorn
your bridal beds, and hold up the torches. Oh, how unhappy I am in my own
persistent daring! For nothing then I brought you up, my children, for nothing I
toiled away and became worn out with worrying about you; futile were the pains I
put up with in bearing you! Once I, poor fool, had high hopes of you, that I should
grow old and you would lay me out properly in death, an enviable thing for people to
have done for them. But now that sweet thought has withered away. For without you
I shall lead a painful and grief-filled life. You will no longer look upon your mother
with loving glances, but you will be cut off from life and will experience another
mode of existence altogether. Alas, alas why do you look at me like that, my children?
Ah ... What am I to do? You see, my heart is going from me, women, as soon as I
look at my children's bright eyes. No, I cannot bring myself to do it! I take leave of
the resolutions I made before. I shall take the children out of the country with me.
Why should I hurt their father at the cost of their pain and feel twice as much
suffering myself? No, I will not do it. Goodbye to my resolutions.
But ... What is the matter with me? Do I really want to incur mockery and let my
enemies go unpunished? I must have the courage to go through with this. It is
cowardice for me even to allow such soft words to enter my mind!
Go indoors, my children. Let the person who baulks at my sacrifices take the
necessary steps to avoid them. My own hand will not weaken.
So now, the crown is upon the head, the new princess is dying in her robes - that I
am well aware of - and I myself shall take a most dread road and send these children
upon one more dreadful still.
But I long to speak to them! O my children, give your mother your right hand for

166 STEREOTYPEAND REVERSALIN EURIPIDES' MEDEA
her to kiss - give it to me. O beloved hand, beloved lips, what a noble bearing and
countenance my children have! In that other place may you be blessed - your father
has robbed you of an existence here. How sweet the nearness of them, how soft the
skin, and how dear to me the breath of these children! Go in now, go in. I am no
longer able to look upon you, so overcome am I by grief. And indeed I know what
wrong I am about to do, but my rage drives me more powerfully than the calculation
of its consequences - rage which is the generator of peoples' greatest troubles.
1017-80
(excluding 1056-64)
I include the cut of nine lines argued by David Kovacs in a recent

article,21 but not the extended cut made by Diggle in his new Oxford
text. I am finally convinced, though not without some nostalgia for
the old text, by Kovac's arguments for deletion of 1056-64 and the
retention of 1065-80.22 My view is that although the emotional pull of
these nine lines has always been strong, (giving Medea four violent
swerves of direction instead of two), that the cut, quite apart from
logical and linguistic difficulties which argue for it, makes for greater
tautness and a much stronger focus on the now one central place
where Medea does weaken - the seven lines from 1042-48. This one
moment of weakness is all the more striking for being highlighted in
this central position.
The 3Spiaw7r'S' at 1019 is, of course, an answer to a specific piece of
advice from the Tutor, but it has wider resonances for Medea's whole
state. She is by implication asserting she is able to cope with the pain
that will result from the murder she is planning: this assertion is then
mocked by her desperate question which appears to refute it at 1042,
aa'a T' Spd6wo;The doubts following from this take 7 lines and are
followed by a parallel counter-question after these, KaGTOL T7 ITaUXw;
This itself is concluded by another assertion rdS' which
brings the wheel full circle. After this Medea is -roALrT~ov
wholly concerned, as
she was before this key passage, with facing up to the powerful pull
her children's physical presence exercises upon her and the waves of
regret which come over her as she perceives in advance what their
loss means to her. The children's presence on stage throughout the
speech is crucial since it confronts Medea with a physical reality she
cannot avoid. Her full perception of the loss coming to her as it is
faced, first when she just pretends to them that she is leaving them
behind (121ff.), then as she works into the realization that they will
no longer exist at all (1039 and 1041ff.), exposes for the first time in
the play her vulnerability.
Medea's strong attachment to her children (like all instinctive love
must) expresses needs they would have fulfilled had they lived - her
own fierce needs of them. And in the first part of this speech we get a
glimpse of what life might have been like for this woman had not

circumstances driven her far beyond the accepted norms. In turning

her back on the last semblance of family life left to her - the
companionship of her children - she exchanges once and for all the
quiet woman's domestic world for the public arena, more usually the
province of men, to which the notoriety of her deeds will bring her.
The loss of her children is going to wreck her as well as them and her
perception of what her loss means and will mean to her is thus central
through the continuing concentration upon them as they stand before
her.23 It culminates in the tragic statement that this perception of loss
(i.e. calculation of the consequences her rage will bring in terms of
her own as well as their suffering (1046-7)) is none the less
overridden by the more powerful drive of that rage which moves her
finally towards killing.24 So Medea knowingly destroys herself by
killing what she needs for her natural health and loves most. In the
end she allows her very strong love as a mother, essential to her
feminine nature, to be trampled by a heroic resolve which a man
would normally direct towards military enemies, colleagues in arms,
or at least opponents who are not of kindred blood, but which she, in
her extremity, turns upon these innocent objects who are her own
flesh and blood.
We could not have appreciated the full resonance of this monologue
without the previous ironies, the previous exposure in earlier sections
of a double-sided nature which now is forced to confront itself head
on. For we now see that the Medea who expressed earlier such
contempt for the traditional views of women cannot after all escape
her nature as one. Instinctive child love is the very essence of that
nature and is rooted in her. Medea cannot escape her feelings in this
regard and so it turns out that the greatest obstacle to her plans is not
Jason at all or anyone else but herself.
The fact that her heroic resolve triumphs only serves to underline
that in suppressing an instinctual part of her nature she has lost her
humanity. And the strange ending of the play with Medea's magical
escape as a kind of deus ex machina only serves to emphasize this.25
My contention is, therefore, that the climax of the play and its tragic
import lies in this monologue and not later, for only here do we see a
Medea who is not posturing or feigning, but who is inescapably at
last at grips with the very basic forces of her nature and beyond
which she cannot go. In relation to them she cannot pretend, and this
speech shows an honesty of feeling we have not seen in her before. I
would argue that what follows this scene merely serves to underline
the tragic consequences which result from Medea's destruction first
of herself then of others, rather than to introduce any new elements.
There may indeed at the end be apparent transcendent triumph but

that apparent triumph only serves to highlight the loss of humanity

that underlies it. We are aware of its cost.
What an irony then that Medea who has shown relentless heroic
resolve, high courage, and grand rage worthy of any of the great male
heroes of the past and who has dissociated herself from the stereotypes
men have of women, and demonstrated her contempt for them in
action, should in the end be trapped and halted by the very
femininity she attempts to discard and professes to despise.
As for her heroic passion and resolve, Jason is quick to point out
that the source of it has been her relationship with a man. 'You
thought it right to kill them', he says, 'just because of what goes on in
bed.' (Earlier he had taunted her with this at 568ff.) Medea's reply
now comes at 1368, 'Do you think this is a small suffering for a
woman?' This response is, of course, on the grand scale and to Jason
quite absurd but perhaps not to us the audience and certainly not to
her, for Euripides has made us see the injury through Medea's eyes as
she sees it - as something of crucial importance within the only
sphere in which she is now allowed to function - the domestic sphere
of family relationships. This is her only reality and, as Knox says, 'It
is a great suffering for she has nothing else'.26
This play then is partly about the dilemma of being a woman with
all its social presuppositions and expected norms of behaviour when
one is equipped as Medea is with talents and abilities that go far
beyond those norms but with nothing but the norms to apply them
to:
I would rather stand three times in the forefront of battle than bear one child.
(250-1)
Page completely misses the point of the cry - he takes it to be a

Euripideanhit to underminethe glory of war. But it is not this at all,
it is a hit at the falsely stereotyped roles of women. What an asset
Medea would have been in battle with all her heroic qualities. What
an asset she actually was in helping Jason get the Golden Fleece.
Euripides is careful to stress this in Medea's earlier argumentwith
Jason.
Part of her tragedy - and only part I have to admit - is that
although gifted with heroic qualities, she is destined for a very
different role with different expectations. If she were a man she
would be lauded for her courage,but she is forced into a strait-jacket
with only women's concerns to exercise them on, and so inevitably
things go badly wrong and her heroic qualities are turned inwards
upon her own family which is her only sphere of influence. She
cannot reconcile within herself an essentially feminine nature with

masculine talents and so she is destroyed with others around her.

This is not a dilemma restricted to a mythical figure in a fifth-century
context, but has resonances for women at different times and in
different places throughout history as well as a powerful relevance
today.
But what was Euripides in the end trying to say? That stereotypes
are unfair and inadequate? Certainly that, because Medea cannot be
contained by any stereotype men appear to have of women and she
suffers from the constriction of such labels. In fact she wills herself
beyond them, assuming at first with consummate ease a role more
usually associated with men. But perhaps too Euripides was saying
that, notwithstanding all this, stereotypes are very powerful and
cannot so easily be discarded - and why? - because behind them lie
eternal human truths, which are central to our experience rather in
the way that many cliches, however well-worn, sometimes express
basic truths. Medea so confident in sailing beyond her restricted role
is unable to get rid by will power of her basic feminine instincts of
motherhood and child love and in attempting just this she destroys
herself as well as her enemies.
So was Aristotle then perhaps right when in Ch. 15 of the
Poetics he said that it was inappropriate for a woman to show the
courage of a man (dvipEla) or cleverness?27 No, he was not. Because
Medea's very avspEtahelps to create her tragic situation.
And were Webster and Page right when in the footsteps of
Aristophanes they classed Medea as among the BAD women of
drama?28 Page writes, 'Medea is the first of a long line of Bad Women
- Phaedra, Sthenoboia, Kanake, Auge ...' (then he quotes Aristo-
phanes, Frogs 1078ff.). '.. . It is vain to insist that it was all a
misunderstanding. Phaedra resisted her guilty passion. Auge pleaded
an unanswerable defence. But facts are facts and the distinction
between explanation and excuse seems finely drawn.'
Facts are facts, yes. And multiple murder constitutes one of
towering proportions. But there are other facts which precede it and
above all feelings of massive intensity which both generate and
explain it and these tower too if, that is, one is compelled to look, as
this dramatist compels us to do, at the whole thing through Medea's
eyes, and not as a chronicler, or a historian or a lawyer might - or
even another dramatist - giving the facts a different emphasis and
other characters more prominence. The play is called 'Medea' and
that imposes limitations and partiality of vision. We are held by that
partiality at almost every point in the play (except perhaps at that of
the independent messenger's report) and particularly in the climactic
monologue at 1021-80. And because of this the fate of Medea as a

human being and her own suffering concern us, for we have followed
her progress and her battles through the play. And just as it would be
inadequate to describe Macbeth as a play about a 'bad' man so it is
inadequate to label the Medea as simply a play about a 'bad' woman.
It is not the crime which makes this drama but the analysis of
character which leads to it and the many ironies such a dissection of
character by the dramatist reveals. The significant thing is that
Medea, in spite of the enormity of the crime is shown to be a human
being, not a monster,29 and like most human beings to be a mixture of
different elements. Euripides shows her love as a mother fighting for
mastery over desire for revenge, her love as a wife turned to hatred
and a range of other traits too - bravery, treachery, loyalty, friendship,
cleverness, callousness, recklessness, calculation, despair. But hu-
manity is destructible. Medea may escape physically unpunished at
the end, but there is irony because the mental and emotional
punishment she has inflicted on herself more than counterbalances
this apparent freedom. And it is upon this that the dramatist has
concentrated earlier. The soliloquy is at the play's heart and the
tragedy there revealed shows the breaking of a human being that goes
beyond simple moral terms and makes Aristotle's labels and blanket
words like 'good' and 'bad' wholly inadequate to describe the
dramatic action of the Medea. If only because they can admit of no
qualification and no irony.
NOTES
1. Eur. Andromache 222ff.

2. i.e. in respect of the contrasting way she welcomes her husband and his concubine home.
See T. B. L. Webster, The Tragedies of Euripides (London, 1967), p. 57. On the qualities of
character shown here by Deianeira see Kamerbeck's edition of the Trachiniae, p. 15 and pp.
109-10.
3. A type established by Homer in the Iliad and continued throughout antiquity both in
literature and art. See Pauly's RE 1.2.2 2151-2152 under Andromache and note particularly
Euripides, Troades 643ff. and Seneca, Troades 642ff. Also for art - Pausanias 10.25.9 and
Plutarch, Brutus 23. Minor characters throughout tragedy, e.g. Ismene, Chrysothemis, provide
something of a stereotype.
4. The question of the exact status and legality of Medea's marriage to Jason, given that she
is a foreigner, is not raised in the play. I agree with P. E. Easterling, YCS 25 (1977), 180 that
'Jason and Medea are to be regarded as permanently pledged' and that 'the theme of their oaths
is given repeated stress: 21ff.; 160ff.; 168ff.; 208ff.; 438ff.; 492ff.; 1392'.
5. p. xxi.
6. 1339-40.
7. 259ff. and especially the Chorus' reply at 267ff.
8. 234-5.
9. 236-7.
10. 244-5.

11. 247.
12. There is much discussion in the play of what constitutes a ao ds or ao ta both for
women and others. E.g. 320, 294ff., 580ff., 190ff. N.b. 385, 409 and, of Medea specifically, 285,
385, 539.
13. 374-5.
14. YCS 25 (1977), 197 and 201-2.
15. See Knox, 196.
16. Heracles is the paradigm of heroic arete in Pindar, e.g. Nem. 1. 33ff.; Pyth. 9. 87ff.;
Isthm. 4. 56ff.; 01.10. In Euripides' Heracles he takes revenge on his enemy Lycus by killing
him and his family (see his speech at 565ff. and the subsequent murder) and much attention is
also given to his heroic labours (20 and 348ff.). On KaAAGvLKo0 see note 20.
17. Knox, 198, points to other words and phrases later in the play which characterize the
hero, particularly the Sophoclean hero, e.g., 8pacao, rashness (856), and phrases expressing
determined resolve, e.g. Epyaar(ov (791), 8Eoy[yEvW v (1236, 822.). &ycv is a word
88o0KTrat, Heracles
Euripides applies to the heroic trials of Heracles, e.g. 787-8, 70v
'HpaKAovU]iKaAAGv*LKov
dyJva and later tragically, dywv'E'iW r TEKVWV.
18. p. xix. Tovy'
19. 482ff.
20. KaAAGvLKo0, a word often used in association with the great Heracles; Archilochus 207
(120D),3W KaAAGVLKE XaLp'dva( 'HpdKAEES,i/TEAAa KaAAGVLKE and Pindar, 01.9. 2 (Wilamowitz on'
Herakles 80), cf. Eur Herakles 582, 961, 681, 1046; cf. 49, 570, 789.
21. CQ 36 (1986), 343-52. See also H. Lloyd Jones, WiirzburgerJahrbucher NF 6a (1980),
51-59.
22. Particularly strong seem to me to be (i) the inconsistency between 1058 and 1060-61
where Medea imagines the children in Athens, then implies they will be in Corinth; (ii) the fact
that 1062-3 have long been regarded as a borrowing from 1240-41; (iii) the fact that if this
passage stands, Ovt6dswould be used in two very different ways in two contexts where much
stress is upon the word (see M. D. Reeve, CQ 22 (1972), 55).
23. The theme of children is also important before this speech and in the play as a whole.
See E. Schlesinger in Oxford Readings in Greek Tragedy (Oxford, 1983), pp. 302ff.
24. On the force of /ovAE'iMara and Ovtds see Lloyd Jones, loc. cit., 58 and Kovacs, loc. cit.,
351.
25. See Schlesinger, loc. cit., p. 310.
26. p. 224.
27. 'The second thing to aim at is propriety. There is a type of manly valour; but valour in a
woman, or unscrupulous cleverness is inappropriate' (Butcher's translation).
28. Webster, op. cit. (n. 2), p. 52; Page, Introduction to the Medea, p. x.
29. See also Schlesinger, loc. cit., p. 299.


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Stereotype and Reversal in Euripides' 'Medea'

Author(s): Shirley A. Barlow

This content downloaded from 80.193.102.218 on Thu, 4 Sep 2014 10:27:30 AM