Medea Double Sided Character

In Euripides play Medea the character of Medea creates a double sided character through out the play. Medea starts off the play as the loving and caring wife in her marriage that would do anything to make sure her husband is safe. At the peak of the reading, she becomes a angry, revengeful, and murderous woman that is demanding respect. Then again you also gain a sympathetic feeling for her because of the situation. Euripides portrays Medea as monstrous yet sympathetic. You get this sympathetic feeling for Medea through out the play because of all that she has gone through and her situation. In the time period wives were seen more as property rather than actual partners in the relationship. Medea even tells that women are the more pathetic, “First of all, we have to buy a husband. spend vast amounts of money just to get a master for our body.”(Lines 233-235) Dealing with a man is a lot of up keep and “A man, when he gets fed up with the people at home, can go elsewhere to ease his heart…”( lines 247-248) he has options. Medea must deal with the miserable fate of her life/ home in this foreign country “If a woman leaves her husband, then she loses her virtuous reputation.” (lines 238-239). Her husband left her for another woman and she is stuck with the fate of being alone. …show more content…
Even the nurse is fearful of what Medea may do, “her ways are too wild, her nature is hateful, her mind is too willful.” (Lines 110-111) Hurt and full of resentment because of the affair, she plans to hurt Jason but worse than how he hurt her. Her intent is to cause the maximum damage , even if the actions would wound her just as badly. As she plans the murder of Jason's new wife and her two children, her main reasoning is that she spares herself being humiliated at the feet of the enemy. A woman who would plan to kill her own kids, and the new bride of her ex husband can almost make her seem inhumane and