Analysis Of Broken Oaths And Medea's Revenge

Broken Oaths and Medea’s Revenge

What is an oath? The dictionary’s definition of an oath is: a solemn promise, often invoking a defined witness, regarding one’s future action or behavior. In assessing the character, of the many facets of the complex personality of Medea, in the Greek Tragedian Play, one must first get a feeling for the author of the play. In an article written by Fletcher in which she analyzes three of the play writer’s plays, Euripides is known to have women tendering oaths to men, which in that time was an extreme social challenge to the hierarchy of society (Fletcher). The oaths that they were asking men to undertake were on three levels. The oath between man, woman and with the god who later serves as the guarantors of

Medea provides us with an excellent analogy on her own exile and that of women who are alienated in life in general. Her suffering can be viewed as whole group, women suffering as a tragedy. We find Medea’s character at this time in the play to be one of revenge seeking for Jason breaking their oath of marriage. She has murder on her mind, but it was not until Aegeus, saw her revenge plot appropriately facilitated with him agreeing to allow her refuge in his country; complete with an oath (Fletcher). The author goes on to note that this was the second time that we have a female-authored oath, with eventually contributes to women controlling the textual strategy in the play, utilizing a seductive magic and tricky persuasions. In both situations, Medea was able to utilize her position, as she called it, a foreign woman without recourse. The effective use of oaths, not only allowed her safe sanctuary into Aegeus’s country, but the alliance eventually become a marriage in which she fulfills her promise that he would be able to bear a son,

Medea’s character from the beginning of the play was one of love and absolute loyalty for her husband. When they were exiled to Corinth, she stood by his side with their two children. It was only when her husband took it upon himself to abandon her for the King’s daughter did she start to exhibit personality disorders that would eventually lead to the death of Glauce and her two boys. Medea’s character can be summarized as one of an extremely mean spirited, revengeful wife who was possessed with extracting revenge on the parties that were responsible with contributing to the break-up of her marriage. Perhaps the sorcery aspect in her life and repertoire had a great deal to do with her unforgiving nature. I believe that she felt alone, as she fled her own country, friends and family to start anew with Jason, and that total lack of love and belonging with her, eventually changed her personality to one of extreme hate, deception and