While all of the characters call
upon the Gods at some point in Medea,
the Gods that Medea calls upon reflect her chaotic state of mind. Just like
Iago slips into prose when his thoughts become malicious, Medea calls upon Titans
(a group of deities that resided in Olympus before the Olympians) as her
thoughts become malevolent. The quote above represents Medea’s descent into chaos.
When Medea kills her sons, Jason says that her actions are “a thing not one of all
the maids of Greece, not one, had dreamed of” (43). While murdering one’s own
children is a sin in humanity’s eyes, it is common in the laws of nature. Cronus,
the King of the Titans, ate Zeus and the other Olympians with the hope that
they wouldn’t overthrow him. While humanity hopes to achieve order, the Titans
represent a primitive time of chaos.
It is only fitting that
as Medea slips farther away from the laws of man, she leans on the very deities
that created the laws of nature. At the very beginning of the play, when Medea
begins thinking of her revenge, she says “So help me She who of all Gods hath
been the best of me, of all my chosen queen and helpmate, Hecatê” (19). Hecate
is a primordial goddess of witchcraft. Medea’s call to Hecatê, reveals her
kinship with a goddess of both witchcraft and chaos. Even at the end -when the
deus ex machina occurs- it is not a God that helps Medea, but rather a Titan:
Helios. Helios is Medea’s “father’s father, the high Sun” (43). The fact that
Euripides made Medea’s grandfather a Titan hints at the barbaric and chaotic
nature of her bloodline.
Also, Medea's state of mind does not deteriorate without Medea noticing. At the end of her first attempt to murder her children, she states, "I know to what bad things I go, but louder than all thought doth cry anger, which maketh man's worst misery" (61). Medea realizes how her anger is causing her insanity. She is not ignorant of her chaotic state of mind.
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ReplyDeleteI really like your connection to the Titans, who represent devastation and destruction. Your post reminded me Eówyn in J.R.R. Tolkien's _LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING_ when she destroys the Witch-King of Angmar who no man is able to kill, according to prophecy. She proved that the male gender literally cannot kill such a powerful creature, whereas members of the female gender can. Could this show that women such as Medea and Eówyn are not equal to men, but possibly superior to them, as powerful as the Titans?
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