Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(73)

I have probably seen this play thirty times: in English, in Greek, set in the Bronze Age, set now. And it is always at this moment that I think the whole thing must collapse. That even Jason – who isn’t stupid, and knows his wife – will surely, surely guess that she is playing him for a fool. In Agamemnon, we watch a similar scene where Agamemnon simply doesn’t realize that Clytemnestra is plotting his imminent murder. But the difference there is that Agamemnon has been away from his wife for ten years, and we never get the impression that they were a close couple. There is always a sense that she outclasses him in terms of intellect, and that he is just about clever enough to realize this and resent her for it. Watching Clytemnestra toy with Agamemnon is like watching a malevolent cat preparing to launch a full-clawed attack on a bad-tempered, rather stupid dog. But Jason and Medea’s relationship is a different beast: we can always feel the attraction between them. Jason isn’t stupid at all, he’s just not in the same league as Medea. Agamemnon fails to read Clytemnestra’s intentions because he isn’t interested in her, doesn’t think about who she is and what she is likely to do. You could accuse Jason of the same problem, but I think Euripides has done something else here. Jason believes Medea because he wants to. Even as she lays it on so thickly – suggesting she might have stood in attendance on Glauce is clearly overdoing it – he wants her to be telling him the truth. He wants Medea to accept his behaviour in the light he has presented it: as a favour to her and their sons. He doesn’t want to be the bad guy in their marriage, even though he was willing to see his wife and sons go into exile. And Medea knows that. The easiest person to fool is the one who wants to be fooled.

She calls their children outside to greet Jason, explains that their parents have stopped fighting now. When she sees them, she starts crying: she knows what she plans to do. As do the chorus, who issue a brief plea that the imminent evil should advance no further. Jason so much enjoys being magnanimous to Medea in her apparent acceptance of her defeat that it costs me actual physical energy not to reach into the pages or onto the stage and slap him. Of course you’re angry that I’m marrying again, he says. But I’m glad you’ve come to accept that it’s a good idea. This is the behaviour of a sensible woman.32 He looks to his sons and imagines them grown up, strong. Medea cries again and he asks what has upset her. Nothing, she replies. I was just thinking about the children.

And now she has Jason disarmed, protective of their boys and sympathetic to her, she makes her move. Her tears have been real enough, but they don’t come at the expense of her ever-plotting brain. Even as she weeps, she is putting the next stage of her plan into action. So she begs Jason to intercede with his wife, and with Creon, to allow their children to stay in Corinth. Medea will go into exile, but the children should remain with their father. Jason agrees in principle, though he isn’t sure he’ll be able to persuade Creon. It’s a nice touch from Euripides, because we have seen how easily Medea managed to get what she wanted from Creon, even when he was so angry and frightened by her. Jason doesn’t have her persuasive skills.

Your wife could persuade her father, she says. I’ll send the children with wedding presents for her, gifts from my grandfather, the sun god. Don’t be silly, Jason says: she has a house full of dresses, you keep them. She’ll do it because I ask her to, if she cares about me: not because of trinkets from you.

Is there a slight hint of trouble in paradise here? A sense that Jason doesn’t have the same connection with his new bride that he had with Medea? There is a faint whiff of disapproval when he says she has a palace full of dresses and gold. Jason – we might remember – was deprived of his kingship by Pelias. Perhaps he has the self-made man’s irritation with the privileged classes. And that ‘if’ is interesting too: if she cares about me, she’ll do it because I ask her. Jason knows – doesn’t he – that Medea’s gifts will very likely sway Glauce, and he would much prefer it to be his charm that makes her do what he asks. Is he slightly annoyed that she doesn’t hang on his every word? That his bright young fiancée loves shiny, pretty things and doesn’t treat him as the voice of all reason? It must be especially annoying to meet someone young and pliable after being married to someone as clever and ma-nipulative as Medea, and then find out that your second wife still doesn’t treat you as the conquering hero you’re sure you are.

But Medea knows better than to press this point and aggravate Jason’s ego. Even the gods are persuaded by gifts, she says. And gold beats a thousand arguments among mortals.33 She gives her gifts to the children to take to Glauce. Make sure she receives them with her own hands,34 she says. Go quickly.

Jason and the children leave, and the chorus deliver a lament which begins, ‘Now I have no more hope that the children will live, no more . . .’ They weep for Glauce, for Jason, for Medea. The tutor appears onstage with the children and tells Medea that their banishment has been rescinded. She weeps, knowing what this means. He thinks she must be crying for herself, for her own exile from her children. She allows him to believe this, and holds her children close. Now she delivers the second great monologue of this play, in which the warring halves of her character – her love for her children versus her refusal to allow her enemies to prosper – are given full, extraordinary expression.

You still have a city and a home, she tells her sons, but you will be abandoned and I will be wretched. I’ll never see you grow up, never see you marry. So it was all futile for me: raising you, the awful pain of childbirth. I dreamed that one day you would look after me in my old age, ready me for burial when I die. I would have been envied by everyone. But now that sweet thought is dead.35 I will live a life of grief and pain without you. Your beloved eyes won’t look upon your mother any more. You’re smiling at me, your final smile.