Part Five: Telling the Story

After the Aigeus episode at the center of the drama Medea takes up her own story and reworks it.¹⁷

Medea can be seen throughout rewriting and editing her story for different audiences: to the women of the chorus she represents herself as a fellow victim of male oppression, but without a family to protect her, as they have, and provide her with social relationships after the defection of her husband; to Creon, after trying to talk to him as an equal, she makes herself appear helpless, but once again with the chorus she is more forthright.

To Jason she reiterates her position in the heroic saga as one of the Argonautical adventurers and in fact the savior of the expedition. To Aigeus she places herself as the wronged woman, but with powers restored (once again the helpful princess, and clearly in a reciprocal relationship, since she promises to restore his reproductive potency).

A question for deeper consideration might be: what story of Medea do we get from her own words? Does she have a continuity of self or is she only the successive representations of herself in the successive scenes? How would the original audience have been affected by her various self-presentations? And how are we brought closer to or distanced from her?

Medea is in complete control of the plot that she devises and even more: how can she know that her plan will physically destroy Creon but not Jason? She has logic at her disposal, no character more so; but she has other non-logical ways of knowing and dealing with reality as do we all, though usually with less certainty. She knows the hearts of the two men. Creon loves his daughter. Jason is in love with success and power. He does not even stay to see his bride model her new finery. Her love for the lovely things overcomes her disgust with the children, Medea's spawn.  

Part Seven: The Slave's Voice Back to the top of this page