Medea

The fresh and modern portrayal of women in Euripides’ Medea is anything but empowering. I hesitate to promote Medea’s power and strength in the same way I hesitate Adolf Hitler’s — neither of them are role models, despite their great power and influence. Medea is not a wife, mother, or woman to be championed. She is barren of any kind of mercy or grace, but is instead filled with a rage so wretched that she would rather everyone burn (literally, in some cases) than be wronged herself. Euripides does not present to readers a classic heroine with a hamartia — he presents an utter monster.

Medea does not deserve recognition as some feminist of Ancient Greece. She is no suffragette. She stands for no cause but her own. For what is the point of gaining freedom if you have to step on the necks of everyone else to achieve it? Should you seek justice at the cost of being ruthless? Instead, Medea responds to injustice with more injustice. Is it sometimes not better to just be wronged and to “take the high road” with patience and mercy? Perhaps Medea later found out that revenge is overrated, and, unfortunately, permanent.

Overall, the story of Medea is a frustrating one. Her character proves just how flawed human ideas of justice are, for who can justify the death of her sons for the mistake of their father? Medea’s ideas of justice, certainly, ought to be rejected and not encouraged or label as “empowered.” For many women in Ancient Greece could have done what Medea did, but Medea lacked their wisdom and self-control. Sometimes the most empowered women are not the loudest ones, but the quietest, for they know to weigh their words and especially their actions much more heavily.