Order 870497: Question on the play Medea, by Euripides

Audience Uncertainty and Euripides' Medea Author(s): Stuart Lawrence Source: Hermes, 125. Bd., H. 1 (1997), pp. 49-55 Published by: Franz Steiner Verlag Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4477177 Accessed: 08-03-2018 05:07 UTC

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AUDIENCE UNCERTAINTY AND EURIPIDES' MEDEA

In the words of Charles SEGAL writing on the 'Bacchae', Euripides' "' feeling for the tragic antinomies of life"...finds its clearest expression in doubling, the pairing of opposites, and the sliding of opposites into one another'.' Ambiguity and unresolved contradiction are typical of this tragedian. In the 'Bacchae' for example the god Dionysus embodies various polarities: male and female, Greek and foreign, rational and non-rational, agent and victim, god and beast, god and human being. In some sense, literal or figurative, all of these oppositions apply also to 'Medea', and the play is disturbing because the protagonist arouses conflicting responses2. Indeed, Euripides fosters ambivalence and ambiguity part-

ly through the play's tadvotx and partly at the emotional level by eliciting at different times sympathy or alienation. The spectators (and especially the men) are compelled thereby to view, however reluctantly, Medea's psychology as relevant to their own, although after the infanticide they may feel the impulse to

dismiss her as totally alien, as a highly emotional and irrational barbarian sorcer-

ess who could have nothing in common with a sensible and decent Greek male. Ambivalence and ambiguity are at once to the fore in the prologos where, if the

audience entered the theatre expecting to see Medea the exotic criminal, they received essentially (though not entirely) the opposite impression3. The nurse, the

tutor and the chorus of Corinthian women are all well-disposed towards Medea and severely critical of Jason4. We are informed of her services to him at

1 C. SEGAL, Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides' 'Bacchae', Princeton 1982, 25. SEGAL here quotes F. WASSERMANN, Man and God in 'Bacchae' and 'Oedipus at Colonus', in: Studies

presented to David M. Robinson, ed. C. Mylonas and D. Raymond 2, St Louis 1953, 563.

2 'The 'Medea's' harsh effect on the audience is further intensified by the fact that the reactions demanded from them at various points are so turbulently contradictory. Euripides did

not simply show his audience complexities; he made them feel them in the confused tumble of

their emotional responses to the characters and their actions' (E. A. McDERMOTI, Euripides'

Medea. The Incarnation of Disorder, Penn State UP 1989, her emphasis 78). G. H. GELLIE, The

Character of Medea, Bull.Inst. Class.Stud. 35, 1988, 19, sees Medea as 'a conglomerate of

qualities shaped by various influences into a creature who can fill a stage or a story but was never

seen walking down a street.'

3 D. L. PAGE, Euripides. Medea, Oxford 1938, xviii-xxi, thought that Euripides' audience

would respond to Medea the foreigner in terms of certain stereotypes. The view has found little

favour, but the poet may have counted on the existence of such prejudices and then set about overturning them. E. HALL, Inventing the Barbarian, Oxford 1989, 17, 35 n. 110, suggests that it

may have been Euripides who transformed Medea into a barbarian.

4 E.g. 49ff., 82-88, 173ff.

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50 STUART LAWRENCE

considerable cost to herself, of her subsequent loyal submissiveness as his wife, of

her acceptance by the Corinthians and of Creon's intention to banish her from

Corinth. We hear too her heartbroken cries from within the house5. In counter-

point to all of this, however, we are reminded that in helping Jason Medea was

prepared to go to barbarous lengths, that she is a dangerous and formidable

adversary, that she hates her own children, that she may strike down friends

indiscriminately with foes and that she is impervious to advice or influence6.

These antithetical ideas and feelings merge or alternate. The Pelias affair is cited

as a service to Jason, but it is also an instance of Medea's ruthless criminality.

Medea's sufferings move us to pity but also alienate us by their almost inhuman

excess (she is likened to inanimate nature at 28-29) - and there is the threat to the

children7.

The technique of Medea's great address to the chorus (214ff.) is similar. The

audience would sympathise with Medea the victim of an extreme situation to the

point perhaps of wanting revenge for her sake, but the retaliation intimated is

clearly a murder (iaucpovoycpa, 266) of which the audience could not have

morally approved. It will not do here to appeal to the dictum 'harm your enemies'

because, firstly, the audience's sympathy is too equivocal to count as identifica-

tion with Medea, and, secondly, what is in prospect is the killing of a husband and

that for a crime considerably less than Agamemnon's in Aeschylus where the

chorus, despite their condemnation of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, are utterly

appalled by his wife's deed8.

Medea's argument in this speech creates a further unease. In describing the

social disabilities of women so readily recognisable to an audience she provides

S E.g. 9-15, 31-35, 70-72, 96-98, 143-47. B. GREDLEY, The Place and Time of Victory:

Euripides' 'Medea', Bull.Inst.Class.Stud. 34, 1987, 27-29, remarks on the importance of the

crvij, or the area behind it, as the locus of Medea's alienation, from which her emotions spill

out on the stage.

6 E.g. 9, 28f., 36-45.

7 'Medea herself is presented in all the alarming violence of her passion, but framed by the

sympathy of the Nurse and chorus, and therefore to be seen by the audience as a victim, even if

also as a potential criminal'. P. E. EASTERLING, The Infanticide in Euripides' 'Medea', Yale

Class.Stud. 25, 1977, 181. D. J. CONACHER, Euripidean Drama, Toronto 1967, 187, observes: 'The

series of emotions traversed - sympathy, apprehension, horror - anticipates in a few rapid strokes

the responses which, in the same sequence, the coming action will evoke'.

Euripides' use of the mythic sources and the question of the originality of the deliberate

infanticide is discussed by PAGE (n. 3) xxiff. The question of the priority of Neophron's play is the

subject of a study by A. N. MICHELINI, Neophron and Euripides, Medea 1065-80, T.A.Ph.A. 119

(1989), 115-35. W. STEIDLE, Studien zum antiken Drama, Munich 1968, 154 n. 16, finds the

references to Medea's hatred of the children fully intelligible to an audience only if they were

aware of a prior tradition of deliberate infanticide, whereas T. V. BUTTREY, Accident and Design

in Euripides' 'Medea', AJ.Ph. 79 (1958), 12-14 discusses possible audience reactions to refe-

rences to the children precisely on the opposite assumption.

8 Ag. 1399ff.

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Audience Uncertainty and Euripides' Medea 51

one context at any rate for explaining her later deeds, at least when she appends

the exacerbating factor of her status as an exile. There is no attempt here to define

her situation by ethnicity or individual temperament, i.e. that she is a barbarian

and naturally passionate,and therefore more likely to kill. If an audience goes with

Medea on this, they may well have to think that a Greek woman in this extreme

situation might have been capable of similar bloody deeds9. There is no invitation

to dismiss Medea as alien to the spectator's psychology or culture.

If an audience experiences a blend of amoral admiration and moral unease at

Medea's Odyssean manipulation of Creon and exploitation of his sensitivity to a

supplication10, a higher intensity of emotional ambivalence and conceptual uncer-

tainty arises out of Medea's reactions after that scene. In this monologue, which

falls into two parts, Medea begins by relishing the fulfilment of her vindictive

schemes now spelt out fully for the first time (364-85), at which point it is at least

doubtful that the audience are actively supporting Medea rather than standing in

awe of her singleminded audacity. If they are responding morally at all they will

condemn a revenge that cuts down the innocent with the guilty. In any event

Medea is not here explicable as the representative Greek or Athenian woman, and

the reference to her skill in drugs (384-85) recalls the tradition of Medea the

sorceress11. On the other hand, her determination to silence the laughter of her

enemies puts her in the company of the male heroes of Greek legend and morally

on the same ground in principle as such decent men as Plato's Polemarchus12.

9 Euripides makes his audience aware that 'pressures analogous to those working upon

Medea exist in their own comfortable homes'. K. J. RECKFORD, Medea's First Exit, T.A.Ph.A. 99

(1968), 339. 'Medea is a barbarian with incalculable power; she is also an archetypal Married

Wife, and as such an isolated foreigner. This second aspect of Medea, together with the

relentlessly recognizable portrait of her as a woman wronged, is designed to prevent every man in

the audience from comfortably dissociating her from his own Greek spouse'. M. VISSER, Medea:

Daughter, Sister, Wife and Mother, in: Greek Tragedy and its Legacy (ed. CROPP. et al.), Calgary

1986, 152. H. ROHDICH, Die Euripideische Tragodie, Heidelberg 1968, 47f., sees Medea as a

'normal' woman different from the chorus only in the extremity of her circumstances.

10 R. G. A. BUXrON, Persuasion in Greek Tragedy, Cambridge 1982, 35, commends

Creon's sense of ai&& here. For a dissenting view see D. KoVACS, Zeus in Euripides' 'Medea',

A.J.Ph. 114 (1993) 56.

11 B. M. W. KNox, The 'Medea' of Euripides, Yale Class.Stud. 25 (1977) 211-16, denies

that Medea is any more a sorceress than Creusa or Deianeira who have recourse to drugs with

supernatural associations or ingredients. But Medea is a professional: S. P. MILLS, The Sorrows of Medea, Cl.Phil. 75 (1980) 291-93, cites 'the magical aid Medea gave Jason in his Colchian

adventures... (476-82)', the murder of Pelias, 'alluded to frequently (9-10, 486-87, 504-5, 734), ...Medea's origin as not merely a foreigner but as someone who entered Greece from outside the whole known world... (1-2,.. .210-12, 431-33, 1262-64)', and Medea's offer to cure Aegeus' childlessness. See also CONACHER (n. 7) 186, M. P. CUNNINGHAM, Medea &no' gqXcavfj;, CI.Phil. 49 (1954) 153.

12 Republic 332b. When 'Euripides gives the barbarian witch the ideals of a traditional

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52 STUART LAWRENCE

In the second part of the monologue (386-409) Medea the victim briefly

reappears (386-89), but before sympathy has developed any momentum Medea

the sorceress re-emerges with Medea the desperate and determined 'Sophoclean'

hero13 (391ff.), the woman who forms her self-view on the basis of her highly distinguished ancestry (406). So by the time the speech ends with a sarcastic

reference to a stereotype about evil, scheming women that seem to offer an escape

hatch to those who would dissociate themselves from Medea (407-9), it is at least

clear that nothing is as clear as such stereotypes would suggest.

In a short ode (410-45) the chorus claim that Jason's treatment of Medea has

discredited the traditional prejudice about female deceitfulness, making the barba-

rian woman the positive pole of an antithesis that has Greek males at its other end

(410-30, 439-40). But the audience can reflect that Medea herself has just shown

herself to be the arch-deceiver. The play will offer no evidence at all for (or indeed

against) the cultural superiority of non-Greeks. None of Medea's behaviour up to this point has been explained as the product of an alien society14. The nurse

attributed her excesses to her royal upbringing (1 19-21)15, and even Creon, while expressing fear of her ao(pia in drugs, made no mention of any suspect foreign

vOgoI (282-91). The first two scenes with Jason explore in a problematical way the relation of

reason to emotion. In his criticism of what he clearly considers Medea's stupid

emotionalism (446-58) Jason casts himself in the role of a cool, sensible man who

plans intelligently for the future (459-63, 547-73). But the spectator cannot

accept this implied antithesis. Medea is certainly emotional, and her threats were

stupid, but she is now concealing her feelings in the interests of a carefully plotted

revenge. People sometimes assume, as Jason does here, that strong emotions are

antithetical to and incompatible with rational planning. But the spectator knows

from what he has seen of Medea how simplistic this is. The scene of false

reconciliation will confirm it and the Great Monologue show just how reason and

emotion are tragically related in Medea. Jason, who to his own misfortune does

not realise it, himself appears immune to strong feelings, the good as well as the

bad. But not only is Jason unemotional; he is unheroic. We see this when Medea

reinterprets his exploits as her own (476-87). Again we are debarred from taking refuge in stereotypes. It is worth noting too that Jason's male Greek fame is based

on the achievements of a barbarian female16.

Greek hero he is surely suggesting that there is no safe dividing line; civilized life is always most

precariously poised, continually threatened from within' - EASTERLING (n. 7) 191.

13 KNox (n. 11) 196-206. 14 'If Medea is to be seen as a distinctively oriental type.. why does Euripides make her

talk like a Greek, argue like a Greek, and to all appearances feel like a Greek? - EASTERLING (n. 7)

180, her emphasis. See also KNox (n. 11) 217.

15 For Medea as virtually a tyrannus see PAGE (n. 3) ad 119-30 and K. VON FRIrz, Antike

und moderne Tragodie, Berlin 1962, 357.

16 On Medea's contribution and Jason's status as a flawed hero see VON FRITZ (n. 15) 33 If.,

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Audience Uncertainty and Euripides' Medea 53

In the brief ode that follows the scene of spurious reconciliation (976-1001)

the chorus divide their sympathy among all the parties, and all are viewed as

victims. Medea herself is now two people: Medea the agent and Medea the victim

of Medea the agent. Now that she has effectively removed all her opposition, only

Medea can oppose her own resolve17. If, with KoVACS18, we accept that the entire

Great Monologue is genuine (apart from 1056-64), we encounter in the final

couplet a Medea who dissociates herself emotionally from her irresistible ihjgo6; (as the source of her terrible sufferings)19. Those of us who consider the lines

authentic can look upon Medea at this point as the woman and mother disowning

an alien entity. (Otherwise she is to be identified with the ftugo6;, and the maternal feelings will be secondary20.) Medea, once all focussed t3Rugo6, is at this point also a mother and a detached critical awareness. Yet this awareness knows that its

rationality will soon be harnessed to the terrifying irrationality of the itg6o;21.

The ugly murders of Creon and the princess and the perpetrator's response to

them (1133-35) could hardly fail to revolt the Greek audience, as they do the messenger, for Medea is not torn on this issue as she was about the infanticide, to which she now turns, resigned to its necessity (whether as the perfect revenge or to

forestall the children's murder by the Corinthians: 1236-41). She is not dehuma- nised yet but aware of the lasting sorrow their loss will bring (1247-50), and even ex machina she admits that she suffers, although at this point she claims that it is

worthwhile. (Contrast 1362 with 1046f.)

The resolution ex machina has aroused endless controversy, largely because it

seems to belong to a different level of the dramatic illusion, with supernatural

elements negating the earlier realism. But there is no absolute break between the

scene and what precedes it, for Medea needs transport from Corinth (Aegeus

356; S. A. BARLOW, Stereotype and Reversal in Euripides' 'Medea', Greece and Rome 36 (1989)

162; A. P. BURNETr, Medea and the Tragedy of Revenge, CI.Phil. 68 (1973) 16; D. BOEDEKER,

Euripides' 'Medea' and the Vanity of logoi, Cl.Phil. 86 (1991) 104-6.

17 KNox (n. 11) 200f., CONACHER (n. 7) 195.

18 D. KoVACS, On Medea's Great Monologue, Cl.Qu. 36 (1986) 343-52. For references to

recent debate see GREDLEY (n. 5) 36, n. 4.

19 G. R. STANTON, The End of Medea's Monologue: Euripides' 'Medea' 1078-80, Rh.M.

130 (1987) 97-106.

20 See E. SCHLESINGER, On Euripides' 'Medea', in: Euripides, ed. E. SEGAL, New Jersey

1986, 72.

21 H. D. F. Kirro, Greek Tragedy, London 1961, 195, finds Medea's struggle with her maternal feelings 'theatrical' rather than 'psychologically convincing' in line with his view of her

as a monolithic embodiment of i5it6;. EASTERLING (n. 7), 188, is more judicious: 'The detail of

the speech suggests that despite a certain rhetorical formalism of manner Euripides keeps close to

observed patterns of human behaviour.' Medea's disdain for and manipulation of feminine

stereotypes fail in the case of the maternal instinct which is more than a stereotype (BARLOW [n.

16] 164f.); 'the Medea who expressed earlier such contempt for the traditional views of women

cannot after all escape her nature as one'.

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54 STUART LAWRENCE

offered only sanctuary at 725-30), and the logic of a fully triumphant revenge

requires a further confrontation with Jason during which she must remain inviola-

ble22. Doubtless these requirements could have been met without recourse to a

supernatural device23, but the dragon chariot has obvious theatrical and figurative

advantages. With respect to theatrical considerations, Euripides has kept his

audience guessing about Medea's mode of escape; he now satisfies their curiosity

in spectacular fashion24. On the figurative plane Medea can appear an implacable

deity, an embodiment of her own vengeful i5Thg6. This is manifest in so far as she

is revealed as a Euripidean deus25. But that the break between the Medea of the

epilogue and the earlier woman is not absolute is evident from her words: she

gloats before Jason (which is what the earlier Medea always wanted), while she

admits that she suffers (1362), as she admitted earlier (1247-50). So while some

of her pronouncements are appropriate to a deus but not to a mortal (her prophecy

at 1386-88 in particular), others are equally characteristic both of a Euripidean

deus and of Medea the woman26. In this respect this pseudo-deus contrasts with,

for example, the epilogue of the 'Orestes' which in its reversion to myth is

completely dissonant with the realistic drama that precedes it. Here the realistic

Medea spills over into the epilogue, and the relevance is preserved (and indeed

enhanced) by the figurative dimension of the scene.

Critics who have been impressed only by the gulf between the epilogue and the

earlier scenes have tended to claim that the real Medea, the woman, is now dead or

dehumanised, sometimes without clarifying whether this dehumanisation is literal or merely figurative27. CUNNNINGHAM, however, rightly insists that the apotheosis

is merely figurative, for Medea is en route to Athens and Aegeus, rather than to

Olympus28. Indeed she is invested with characteristically Euripidean ambiva-

lence: she remains a woman but she is also a sort of &Xdat&p. The &XiJLov is perhaps only within29. So in this sense a mortal may incorporate an immortal. But

22 SCHLESINGER (n. 20) 75-77, EASTERLING (n. 7) 190, W. SALE, Existentialism and Euripi- des, Melbourne 1977, 32.

23 SALE (n. 22) 32, suggests 'a pre-arranged escort from Aegeus'. 24 See N. E. COLLINGE, Medea ex machina, Cl.Phil. 57 (1962) 170-72. For this reason, if for

no other, Medea must betray (or simply possess) no foreknowledge of the chariot.

25 See especially KNox (n. 11) 206-10, and CUNNINGHAM (n. 11) passim. 26 On Medea's humanity ex machina see BUXTON (n. 10) 169; C. E. COWHERD, The Ending

of the 'Medea', Cl.World. 76 (1983) 135; EASTERLING (n. 7) 191; STEIDLE (n. 7) 168.

27 E. g. BURNErT (n. 16) 22, KNox (n. 11) 206-9, E. B. BONGIE, Heroic Elements in the

'Medea' of Euripides, T.A.Ph.A. 107 (1977) 55, RECKFORD (n. 9) 333f., 359; LUCAS, The Greek

Tragic Poets, 3rd ed., London 1959, A. LESKY, Greek Tragedy, tr. FRANKFORT, London 1965, 197;

PAGE (n. 3) xiv; MILLS (n. 11) 296; BARLOW (n. 16) 167.

28 CUNNINGHAM (n. 11) 159.

29 As Hecuba tells Helen at 'Troades' 988, 'Your mind was turned into Cypris'.

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Audience Uncertainty and Euripides' Medea 55

there is also traditionally a gulf between mortals and gods which it is i,S"pt; to attempt to bridge. Euripides here undermines that holiest of polarised distinctions

by actually reifying in a visual metaphor the idea that a mortal may be 'demon- ic'30.

Medea is also a monstrous beast, for (one might wish to believe) only a beast could kill her own children (1342f., 1358f.), and yet the gods condone by their silence or actually assist - as Helios does in his inscrutable way3l. This is implied in the chorus' appeal to prevent the infanticide (1251-60) and in Jason's disbelief that Medea could do the deed while looking at the sun (1327f.). Why should a

polluted Helios signal his gratitude with the gift of a winged chariot? Morally, is there anything to choose between the superhuman and the subhuman? If Medea is

a beast or a god, it is because of her iv,io ;, and though this 15vgo6; is excessive, it is still in principle human, and not aberrantly human but dressed in respectability

by the heroic code which converts its non-rational impulses into a hallowed

vogo;, a principle of justice. It follows that the audience cannot dismiss Medea as uncivilised or inhuman or un-Greek, insofar as her motivation is legitimised by the code. Jason claims that no Greek woman would have done it (1339f.), but the

play does not show the infanticide to be the product of Colchian customs, whatever they might have been.

There remains Medea's sorcery. That she habitually employs drugs with Hecate's help is undeniable. But a witch is still a woman, and the supernatural dimension applies only to the means by which she dispatches her victims. It does

not contaminate her motives which originate in the 15vRO6. It does, however, affect the success of her revenge, guaranteeing her invulnerability against Jason.

In conclusion, Euripides invites questioning of rigid categorisations, stereoty-

pes and antitheses. During the course of the play the spectator will have come to

sympathise with and understand a foreign witch by seeing that she is not entirely unlike Athenian wives, and even in some degree resembles Athenian men in her moral outlook32. But he will also have experienced an uneasy sense of alienation from Medea and therefore from his own human nature and Greek culture and he will have come to see that his vaunted rationality, far from being an effective weapon against this evil, may turn out, perfidiously, to be its formidable accom-

plice.

Massey University, New Zealand Stuart Lawrence

30 Aeschylus' Clytemnestra claims to be an iaBoato(op, denying her identity as Agamemnon's human wife, but the chorus insist on the dual operation of the woman and the

assisting avenger (Ag. 1498-1508). The visual metaphor of Medea in the chariot, playing the role

of deus, suggests that she is herself the avenging spirit.

31 See Krrro (n. 21) 201, KNox (n. 11) 204-5.

32 Contrast BARLOW (n. 16) 158, who believes that the fact that Medea is a foreigner and a

sorceress are 'the author's get-outs - loop-holes in case the action turns out to be too controversial

for the audience to stomach'.

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