Medea 421of the drama. Medea finds herself in mourning for
love lost (since her husband Jason has chosen a new
royal bride) and for the country she left and the kin
she has murdered to assist Jason in his ascent to
greatness.
Jason begins the cycle of suffering within the
play proper by betraying his marital loyalty to
Medea. The Nurse, the Tutor, and all of the servants
and slaves are “distressed by [the] wrongs” done to
Medea. However, Medea herself magnifies that suf-
fering. The fact that she is described as having “given
herself up to suffering” is telling. Euripides’ dialogue
leads the reader to the conclusion that, though she
has undoubtedly been wronged by Jason’s betrayal,
Medea chooses to be consumed by her grief. This
consumption causes Medea to be a conduit and
perpetuator of suffering rather than a passive victim
of fate like other tragic heroes, such as Sophocles’
Oedipus.
From her first appearance, Medea’s suffering
is explosive, foreshadowing the full venom of her
wrath. She says, “Ah, I have suffered. What should
be wept for bitterly. I hate you, children of a hateful
mother. I curse you and your father. Let the whole
house crash.” Both Medea’s reputation for inflicting
suffering in her former homelands and her present
rants earn her and her children banishment from
Corinth. Creon is rightly afraid that Medea will
cause suffering in his kingdom.
Throughout the play, Medea is cautioned not
to let her anger and suffering overtake her sense
of reason, but neither Jason’s pleas nor those of the
chorus prove effective. Jason admonishes Medea,
noting how “hopeless it is to deal with [her] stub-
born temper.” He informs her, “You might have
lived in this land and kept your home” had it not
been for “your loose speaking.” It is true that Jason
is not blameless. Whether or not the marriage to
Creon’s daughter would have given Medea and her
children financial security and protection, Jason
has broken his vows of loyalty to her. However,
by reacting as she does, Medea has, in essence,
escalated her own suffering by begging for exile.
To extrapolate, her pride (ego) is so wounded that
she blinds herself to the possibility of acceptance.
Even the chorus, a sympathetic body of Corinthian
women, advises Medea against exacting revenge by
perpetuating suffering.
When speaking with the chorus, Medea makes
no bones about her desire to murder Jason’s bride,
but she does try to rationalize her decision to
murder her children. She announces her intention,
declaring, “[T]hose children he had from me he
will never see again, nor will he on his new bride
beget another child, for she is to be forced to die
a most terrible death,” and she argues that such a
plan is “the best way to wound my husband.” Later,
however, she changes her rationalization for killing
her children. She argues that, since she sent the
children to unwittingly poison Creon’s daughter,
they will be punished, too. (It should be noted here
that if Medea had chosen to send true gifts with
the children in lieu of poisoned ones, her children
would have been allowed to stay in Corinth and thus
escape their share of suffering.) In the end, as Medea
prepares to fly from Corinth with the children’s
dead bodies, she reverts to her original claim that by
murdering Jason’s seed, she makes him suffer most
gravely. Therefore, the reader can see that Medea’s
rationalizations are tactical. Such cunning clearly
indicates that Medea does choose both to succumb
to and to inflict intense suffering.
Euripides’ tragedy is an honest if shocking exam-
ination of the destructive power of human suffering
and the ego’s response to personal slights, for Medea
constructs and perpetuates suffering throughout
the drama. In fact, the only character who does not
directly suffer is Aegeus, the Athenian king with
whom Medea seeks asylum after the play’s conclu-
sion. Having brought suffering upon her father’s
family in pursuit of love before the curtain rises,
she begins the play wounded by Jason and repays
those who collectively break her heart with a wholly
disproportionate response. Medea’s infliction of
suffering is ultimately driven by pride and egoistic
response. Thus, Euripides expands the theme of
suffering to demonstrate that suffering begets suf-
fering in an all-consuming cycle unless one makes
the conscious choice to break it.
Adrian L. Cook