Reason Versus Passion in Medea

Reason versus passion in Medea

By MARGARET SALTAU

WHEN THE first performance of Euripides' play Medea, took place in 431 BC, the audience would have been familiar with the story on which it was based: the myth of how the barbarian princess Medea fell in love with Jason, who led the Argonauts on a voyage to regain the Golden Fleece.

The play offers no surprises when it portrays the killing of Glauke and Creon; even the slaughter of Medea's sons is expected. However, these acts are horrific in their ferocity. They are barbaric, uncivilised, unnatural, and impossible to condone. How, then, can the playwright appear to endorse them by having the sungod send his chariot to save Medea from the wrath of Jason, flying her off to Athens?

Part of the answer to this question lies in the fact that in Medea, Euripides uses the myth in order to engage in an intellectual debate. The characters of Medea and Jason can be seen as representations of two different responses to life.

When we first read Greek drama, we are introduced to the conventions of Greek theatre.

The size of the theatres (and thus the audiences' distance from the actors), the use of only three male actors to play multiple parts, the stylised costuming of the masked actors, the intrusion of the choral commentary - these preclude the sort of identification and character development made possible by modern filmic methods. Denied closeup shots and subtle nuances of tone and volume, Greek audiences were forced to concentrate on the issues raised by the characters' speeches.

The play endorses the premise that only by carefully abiding by the will of the gods can man live safely. The Nurse's choice, ``the middle way'', keeps her safe in this world, but when we look at Jason and Medea, we see characters who represent extremes: one of icy pragmatism untempered by human emotion, the other of emotion unmoderated by the veneer of civilisation.

Both Medea and Jason constantly appeal to the gods; each is convinced the gods must be on their side. Euripides makes it clear, though, that it is Medea who instinctively knows what the gods require. All the qualities that we, as civilised people, admire and cultivate - selfcontrol, moderation, and rationality - are, however, found in Jason.

Medea is cruel, primitive, irrational, passionate, and lays waste the respectable, prosperous life that Jason aspires to. Words such as right and wrong are used unequivocally, but they are used to describe Jason's actions not Medea's. Jason's control is cold and inhuman, his plans selfseeking, his motivation immoral.

In Medea, Euripides creates a very strong sense of place and of what those places represent.

In the play's first speech, the Nurse bewails not only the voyage of the Argo, but also Medea's presence in Corinth. Of less importance, it seems, is Medea's loss of her home. She, because she is ``mad with love'', has quenched her fires for many years. This loss of self is suggested when the Nurse describes her married years; she has been ``all/obedience''. The line break emphasises the extent to which she has subjugated herself to Jason. Euripides suggests that by doing this, by transforming herself into the sort of wife required by Corinthian society, Medea had in fact sacrificed herself for an unworthy cause.

In the Ode to Athens, the chorus praises the values this city embodies: the fusion of learned wisdom and natural passion. This ode is central to the playwright's thesis. Its lyricism is enticing, and poses for the audience the possibility of an ideal world, epitomised by harmony and the blossoming of the most admirable human qualities. A sense of continuity and growth is established by the Chorus's reference to Athens' prosperity, stemming from ``ancient times''. The city's natural wealth is enhanced by a culture, which is inclusive and nurturing. Euripides' language creates images of beauty and peace.

But Athens represents the ideal and Medea is set in Corinth, a city in which reason and passion are polarised. The qualities blended so richly in Athens are isolated and separated in Jason and Medea. Faced with her husband's cold pragmatism, Medea responds according to her nature, untamed by any mitigating effects of the Greek civilisation. Euripides stresses the ``otherness'' of Medea: she is ``of a different kind'', described in terms of nature and animals: she is ``a rock or wave of the sea'', ``like a wild bull'', a ``tiger''. Yes, she is dangerous, but she is driven by her heart, that vital force which distinguishes the body from the corpse and which has been ``crushed'' by Jason's betrayal.

Medea's passion is excessive and destructive, but in Corinth, the alternative is clearly less appealing to Euripides. He creates for us a community which is exclusive rather than inclusive, a society which is inherently unjust and in which one group wields power over another. He emphasises the extent to which Medea has been isolated by the Corinthians.

If to a modern audience Jason's infidelity seems wrong, especially after Medea's sacrifices for him, then his justification of his actions, that he wished to ``ensure (Medea's) future'', is chilling. Yet this is common in Corinth; Jason, the ultimate conformist and pragmatist, is trying to fit in with his social and moral surroundings.

Medea is able to complete her plan successfully because she is able to gain the cooperation of the Chorus by appealing to their common suffering as women. It is after she describes woman's lot ``under the marriage yoke'', that the Chorus agrees to ``say nothing''.

Jason does not operate according to his heart; he calculates where the best profit lies; he boasts that Medea's ``angry words don't upset me'', and assumes that money can excuse any behaviour and solve any problems. By drawing our attention to his total lack of insight into the woman he has lived with for so long, as well as to his ignorance of what the gods require, Euripides subtly further moves sympathy away from Jason.

At the end of the play he is diminished, physically below Medea in the chariot, and as helpless as she seemed at the beginning of the play. He exhibits no heroic qualities, is as ineffectual as a Corinthian woman. He still calls on the gods whose sacred oaths he has broken, still ignoring what he sees before him - Medea being taken to safety in Athens, in the chariot of her grandfather, the sungod, the source of all life. Medea tells Jason she has ``reached your heart; and that is right''; Euripides is arguing that this the killing of the children is the only way this could be done. He is not condoning the slaughter of innocents; he is arguing that there are worse crimes than murder. As William Blake wrote in his Proverbs of Hell: ``Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.''

It is important that it is Athens where Medea will find sanctuary; the passionate, elemental sorceress will be welcomed in this ideal city, while Jason is left alone to await an ignominious death.