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Medea Marriage Analysis

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WORLD LITERATURE ESSAY
Euripedes’ portrayal of the theme and significance of marriage in Medea.
Euripedes portrays the central conflict between Medea and Jason as a resultant of Jason’s betrayal of his marriage to Medea, breaking the marriage vows and rejecting the sanctity of her nuptial bed for the politically motivated marriage with Creon’s daughter. The play, Medea, can be interpreted as a searing indictment of the institution of marriage. It is the desecration of this sacred institution by Jason that infuriates Medea and causes her to unleash her wrath upon Jason by committing filicide so as to leave him without sons to carry his family forward.
In ancient Greece, marriage was usually as a transaction …show more content…

Jason’s new marriage with Glauce plummeted Medea into revengeful and passionate fury. She had given up everything to live with Jason after which he had cheated and tricked her. This makes the readers sympathize with Medea. Jason had spurned the privacy, purity, sanctity of their marriage sphere. In the process of wanting to gain honor, he had backstabbed Medea by demoting her from the status of a legal wife to that of a concubine. The words “disowned her” help to emphasize on this fact. When she was with Jason, she had put on the face of Athenian women but when she lost her only connection with Athens she turned into the barbaric animal who couldn’t control her impassionate emotions anymore. The plot is seen to end right after Medea does justice to herself by destroying Jason’s new family and by killing her own children. The structure of the plot portrays the importance and significance Euripedes associates with marriage …show more content…

Medea was a priestess which made her familiar with the concept of sacrifice. At the point of time when she killed her children, she was not a mother but solely a priestess. This portrays Euripedes’ belief that victims who are betrayed turn against their tormentor and everything related to their tormentor. Even though Medea wins over Jason by filling it with pain and sorrow, she does lose a lot. The phrase “Medea why lie down with death?” shows Medea’s desire to exchange her marriage bed with a death bed due to the intense pain she went through. Thus, Euripedes makes it a point that betrayals in marriages can lead to

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