Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(70)

This is one of the bleakest exchanges in extant Greek tragedy, and that is saying something. How have these two children ended up in such an awful position? A mother who is dangerous and desperate, and a father who literally doesn’t care if they are sent into exile? The nurse and tutor agree that it is best not to mention anything about exile to Medea.

We now hear Medea wailing from inside the house, wishing she could die. The tutor takes the children inside, agreeing again with the nurse that he should keep the boys away from their mother. Medea cries out again: Cursed children of a hated mother, would that you would die and your father too, and the whole house fall to ruin.21 The nurse is upset by this, as we might be. Mothers don’t generally go around wishing their children dead. The nurse tells the chorus that it’s better to be an ordinary person rather than rich or powerful. And in Greek tragedy, at least, she is right: disaster rains down upon the high-born. You are much better off being the nurse or the tutor if you’re hoping to survive to the end of a play. The chorus of Corinthian women express sympathy for Medea: we can see that the nurse was right when she described her mistress as well-liked here. The chorus ask the nurse to bring Medea outside so they can comfort her and perhaps encourage her to be less angry and upset. They call themselves philai – her ‘friends’.22

And now Medea does come outside. We have heard so much about her intense, physical distress: about her lying prone on the ground, deaf to entreaties to get up, to eat. We have heard her crying out in anger and hurt. But when she appears on the stage, she is calmly articulate. This is another indication that she is frightening. Medea is a woman who feels emotions deeply, and yet she can disguise the extremity of her emotions behind a facade of carefully constructed arguments. Throughout this play we will see Medea assume a different persona with each conversation she has: contrite, angry, amenable, humble, raging. All these women are contained within her. No wonder it is a role that actresses clamour to play. Medea is a performer, right down to her bones. And when the occasion demands it, she will always perform.

The monologue that Medea now delivers is one of the greatest pieces of theatrical writing in any language (as is the second, deliberative monologue she delivers later in the play). She begins by addressing the women of the chorus, explaining that she has come out to speak to them because she doesn’t want to be thought of as proud or aloof, just because she is quiet or private. People can be very judgemental, she says, even when you haven’t done anything. It’s especially important for her – a foreigner – to do what’s expected of her.23 Having reminded the chorus – and us – that she knows her place, she appeals to our sympathy. This deed (Jason’s betrayal) was unforeseen, she says, sounding like a lawyer who has just noticed an awkward development in a contract negotiation. And then: it has demolished my psyche – ‘spirit’, ‘soul’, ‘life’. Joy has gone from my life, friends, and I want to die. For my husband was everything to me, and he knows it well, and he has turned out to be the worst of men.

Again, look at the contrast with how Phaedra presents herself when we first meet her in Euripides’ Hippolytus: unable to walk, feverish, desperate to die. And here is Medea, scorned, wronged and absolutely calm as she describes Jason’s destruction of her life. Her self-control is as disconcerting as her extreme emotions. What she goes on to say next is so remarkable that it was being quoted at suffrage meetings more than 2,300 years after it was written. Of all living creatures, she says, we women are the most wretched. Her first complaint is that women have to buy a husband: she means with a dowry. Then he becomes the ruler (the word is despotēn – owner or master. Our word ‘despot’ comes from the same root) of our bodies.24 This makes a bad thing worse, because women don’t know if they’ll get a good husband or a bad one, and they aren’t able to divorce him or reject him.

It’s harder still for her, Medea continues, because she is foreign and you’d need sorcery to understand how to treat a man under new laws and customs. If it all works out, terrific. Otherwise, it’s better to die. A man, if he gets bored at home, can go out and make his own fun. We have to stay at home with one man. And sure, men will tell you that they have to fight in wars. Well, I’d rather stand three times in the front line than give birth to a single child.

It’s different though, for me and you (she’s still addressing the chorus). Because you are in your own city, your father and friends nearby. Me, I have no one. I was homeless before my husband scorned me. I was carried off as booty from my barbarian land. I don’t have a mother, a brother, no relative I can turn to. So I ask one thing of you: if I can figure out a way of punishing my husband in retaliation for the wrongs he has done to me, keep quiet. A woman is filled with fear, she is a coward when it comes to war. But mistreat her in the bedroom, and no one is more bloodthirsty.

Let’s analyse what Medea has just said. Having got the chorus onside at the beginning with her wish to obey their customs, not to be considered aloof or withdrawn, she now appeals to their collective experience. The dowry, to buy a husband. The uncertainty of what you’re getting. The disparity in their options: men can fool around outside the home, but women are stuck there waiting for their husband to come back. And if it doesn’t work out, divorce isn’t respectable for women (unlike men, who can get divorced without difficulty. Although they would have to return the dowry). Perhaps you’re wondering if you missed a version of Medea’s story in which she marries Jason, respectably, with a dowry and a ceremony: you have not. Medea is employing all her rhetorical skill to build connections between her situation and that of the Corinthian women she wants to maintain as allies. Medea’s dowry was the fleece she and Jason stole from her father, their wedding ceremony was Pelias being cooked in a pot. She is presenting herself as an ordinary wife, but she is far from that. Why would we imagine Medea is going to wait at home for her man to come back? She didn’t wait for a marriage proposal, she ran off with an adventurer. She is no one’s fool.