Feminist Reading Of Medea's Patriarchy
"She was magical, lethal, loving, a sorceress, a barbarian, and had a savage truthfulness in her heart". – Brendan Kennelly
Introduction
Eight years ago as I searched for a dissertation advisor, I ran into a wall with the feminist scholars on the faculty of my university. As soon as I explained that I wanted to write about Medea came the assumption: of course, they said, you will be looking at the patriarchy as the issue in her behavior. And when I replied that indeed I was not going to be looking in that direction, but rather at Medea herself and at the meaning intrinsic to her acts and her story, interest in my work evaporated and they declined to serve on my committee. Though long a feminist myself, I had been absent from developments …show more content…
Jason wanted a throne. Medea’s best hope for deeply injuring him in a way that would matter to Jason is to cut off his ambition, deprive him yet again of a throne and then also deprive him of heirs. Greek marriage for the man was intended to provide legitimate heirs and a woman to run the household. Medea’s revenge deprives him of everything that matters to him. Remembering she is neither human nor fully divine, but is instead a creature of the borders, at the boundary between what is civilized and what is not, we may see her violent exit from her home as the path necessary to move out from under her father into her own life. Though literal murder is not an acceptable pathway, on the symbolic level, the severing of these ties can be seen as a kind of murder or killing. The woman who leaves her home to marry may remain sister to her brother, but her primary emotional tie moves from family to spouse and thus the old brother-sister bond is altered, and sometimes does not survive at all. Similarly, if the goal is to move away from one’s home and all that it represents, often actions are taken which make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to return, burning bridges as it were. When Medea leaves Colchis, the land of her father and the land she wishes to leave behind for Greece, she does so in a way that prevents her return. Medea acts out symbolically what happens when we leave. The home we leave never exists again, except in
Introduction
Eight years ago as I searched for a dissertation advisor, I ran into a wall with the feminist scholars on the faculty of my university. As soon as I explained that I wanted to write about Medea came the assumption: of course, they said, you will be looking at the patriarchy as the issue in her behavior. And when I replied that indeed I was not going to be looking in that direction, but rather at Medea herself and at the meaning intrinsic to her acts and her story, interest in my work evaporated and they declined to serve on my committee. Though long a feminist myself, I had been absent from developments …show more content…
Jason wanted a throne. Medea’s best hope for deeply injuring him in a way that would matter to Jason is to cut off his ambition, deprive him yet again of a throne and then also deprive him of heirs. Greek marriage for the man was intended to provide legitimate heirs and a woman to run the household. Medea’s revenge deprives him of everything that matters to him. Remembering she is neither human nor fully divine, but is instead a creature of the borders, at the boundary between what is civilized and what is not, we may see her violent exit from her home as the path necessary to move out from under her father into her own life. Though literal murder is not an acceptable pathway, on the symbolic level, the severing of these ties can be seen as a kind of murder or killing. The woman who leaves her home to marry may remain sister to her brother, but her primary emotional tie moves from family to spouse and thus the old brother-sister bond is altered, and sometimes does not survive at all. Similarly, if the goal is to move away from one’s home and all that it represents, often actions are taken which make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to return, burning bridges as it were. When Medea leaves Colchis, the land of her father and the land she wishes to leave behind for Greece, she does so in a way that prevents her return. Medea acts out symbolically what happens when we leave. The home we leave never exists again, except in