Love Dishonored in Euripides’ “Medea” (Part 3)

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Ancient Greece’s most notorious battle of the sexes, and Euripides’ rumination on the question of whether the Athenian ideals of rationality and moderation sufficiently honor the instinctual side of human nature. Upcoming Episodes: “A New Leaf” (Elaine May), “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt), “Beetlejuice” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:19 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. 0:32 Wes: Okay, welcome to part three of our discussion of Euripides. Medea. Did I get that right? Is Euripides and not Aeschylus? 0:42 Erin: That's right. 0:43 Wes: Thank God. Can't keep any of them straight. But I think the way we ended it the last time, we had gotten through a few pages. A few pages of the play. 0:52 Erin: One or two. 0:52 Wes: Yeah. And we'd gotten a little bit into the battle of the sexes element that runs through the play. And the fact that there. And we will touch on this as we move forward, there are various complaints that Medea. Very interesting complaints that, especially in light of the time, interesting complaints about men and the role of women in society. And then also complaints that Jason has. More predictable. And I want to say dunderheaded for some reason, which is like a very archaic term, but not archaic in the right way, but dunderheaded. Is that even a word? Complaints that Jason has about. 1:31 Erin: Yeah, I think that is about women. 1:33 Wes: But I wanted to start out just a little bit because in light of thinking about women in this play, which is, by the way, you know, it's an explicit theme that Euripides is harping on this play. It's not a let's be academics and look at gender in a play approach. And it's, again, especially interesting in light of the times. And I think it is one of the reasons, as we said in the first part of our discussion, that Euripides was kind of a radical, in a way, for his time. So I think it's worth looking at the role of the chorus early on. It's a chorus of Corinthian women. Sorry, you gotta stop me from doing that chorus of Corinthian women. And the one thing I noted, and this is on pages 54 to 56 of this Penguin translation we're using by Davie. Pretty early on in the play, we get this chorus of women sympathizing with Medea and her sorrows and the sorrows of, quote, unquote, the house. And interestingly, the nurse will say, well, there is no house. The pairing between Medea and Jason no longer represents a house in the sense of this, a dynasty, of a lineage. That lineage, in a sense, is coming to an end, which. Which is very prescient. Right. I mean, they don't know yet that she's gonna kill the kids, but that's what Medea is planning on doing. So she's going to. And Medea will even put it in those terms, she's going to extinguish the house extinguish the lineage by killing their kids. At that point, she's wishing for her own death. And the strophe for the chorus. And I'll say briefly, the strophe and antistrophe, they represent two different perspectives generally, often conflicting perspectives. It's the same chorus, but they're moving from right to left during one speech and left to right during another. So you see this alternation, and sometimes there's a bit of an argument between the two sides, sometimes more subtle, sometimes more explicit. But it's a great way, in a play, to represent inner conflict of the kind that normally you'd have to. Right, you'd have to write a story or a novel to represent. To do it in a play is much harder unless you use this little trick. So the strophe appeals to Zeus to listen to her laments, but not to her wish for death. So grant some of her wishes, but not all of her wishes. And the wish that it reinforces is her. Is her desire to see justice done. Because Zeus, after all, is the God 4:12 Erin: of justice, though his record has been spotty. 4:16 Wes: Yeah, yeah, right. 4:17 Erin: He's officially tough on crime, but. 4:20 Wes: Right, right. It's also a master criminal. And then it also suggests she not grieve. You know, forget about Jason. Don't grieve about that. But constant, don't kill yourself, but concentrate on seeing justice done. So this is a point where I put in my notes, okay? So it's interesting, in a sense, they're actually. And that's really the only time I think they do that. Well, it's subtle, but for the most part, Right. They're trying to slow her down. They're horrified when they find out that she's going to kill the kids. And they're trying to stop all that. They're really trying to put the brakes on all that. But there are subtle ways in which they reinforce her desire for justice. And then this, I thought this is an interesting little pivot point where they kind of nudge her from the idea of suicide to the idea of revenge. 5:05 Erin: Yeah. They tell her. I mean, they're, I think, deeply sympathetic to her for most of the play until there's that turn where you. That you pointed out. You know, they're telling her in this moment to sort of offload justice. Don't take it into your own hands. Zeus will see it done. And just prior to this, Medea has said, if only a flaming bolt from heaven would pierce my head. She references this a couple of times. You know, here it's a metaphor. But then, of course, at the end of the play, spoiler alert, there is a quite real deus ex machina intervention, you know, and she. She also is half God or a quarter God. I'm not sure how we're. How that's determined. Right. So is she really offloading justice onto the gods if she doesn't take revenge herself? Would taking revenge herself be a form of divine justice? I'm interested in. In what you're pointing to with the nurse saying there is. 6:03 Wes: God helps those who help themselves. 6:04 Erin: That's right. 6:05 Wes: I should say Zeus. 6:06 Erin: God helps those who are also gods also. 6:09 Wes: He's not gonna just come down and kill the children for you. You gotta do a little work. 6:14 Erin: Well, I, you know, where, you know, you're pointing out some. Something really interesting about this chorus, that, you know, the point at which the. They stop becoming someone who's on Medea's side or reflecting something of Medea's psyche, and they detach in a way and become external to Medea's decisions to her. They're no longer sympathetic to her. They're no longer in the sisterhood together of solidarity. Right. They're no longer really on her side. I fixated on the there is no house line. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to draw this connection very well. But I think that these things are all related. This. The thunderbolt idea. There is no. I was interested in that as an expression of metonymy. So obviously she's speaking of the house, as you already pointed out, as in the metonym of a royal lineage. She also, just. After this, the nurse says that Jason is captive of a princess's bed, which is another metonym in which Jason is made captive or subject not just to Creusa, but to an item of furniture and thus sort of to his own lust. So I'm interested in that function, that metonymic function, that reality seems to be just an expression of or made up of one's own passions. That passions are like the furniture, the reality of the mind, if you will. I think this is important because of the preponderance of ship metaphors in the play as well that we know that Jason is, of course, famously associated with the Argo. The Argo lends to its name to the sailors that travel on it. Right. The Argonauts. A piece of the ship will fall and kill Jason. So he's killed by an inanimate object. And there are lots of ways we could spin this out and think about this. His ship is his movable home in that story in the Argonautica. Right. It's the security that he takes with him. And he always seems to land on his feet up until this play. Right. And rise to sort of greater and greater heights. He also kind of uses Medea as a vehicle with which to perform his deeds. And now he seems to be using Creusa as a vehicle for further ascending the societal ranks in Corinth. That's where he is. Right. Corinth. We've talked about this, I think, in the previous parts, we talked about him as a social climber. So Medea is without a house. She has no nothing to rescue her from this sea of troubles, I think she calls it. And she describes herself as Jason's plunder. And anyway, all of this to say, I want to tie all this together, and I'm not going to do a great job of it, but just that I want to say something about physical reality and the idea that everything in the play is somehow, like, literalized. Yeah. So I'm just interested in these metonyms and whether or not they tell us something about the way that the plot is functioning. Like, we have a magical dress that will end up changing the course of the plot. Like, objects seem to be quite magical in and of themselves in a play which is otherwise really modern, as we were already saying, and kind of without magic. And maybe that points to the fact that at the end, this chariot will come down and kind of save her, you know, so, like, talk of lightning. Lightning bolt, on the one hand, seems very divorced from a kind of a physical reality. And on the other hand, there's a way in which the play sort of makes good on the magic or the divinity, if you like, of physicalizations of various ideas in the play. I'm not sure if I'm expressing this right, but yeah. 9:54 Wes: Yeah, I think that's a good point. So you're drawing a parallel between the externalization that I'm pointing to with the chorus as an externalization of aspects of her psyche and then these other objects that are externalizations as well, which makes a lot of sense. It reminded me of Kant's concept of what he calls heteronomy, which is to say that when we are in the throes of our passions or our desires, and therefore not free, in a sense, we are subject to the objects of desire and the external environment. We are slaves to desire, but really that means being slaves to what is hetero. Right. To what is outside of us, as opposed to the law that is Internal to us. And that is what makes immorality unfree. 10:44 Erin: That is a great way of taking everything. I was trying to say and giving it the very generous aegis of Kantian. Yes. 10:55 Wes: No, but I. But I do think it's important. Yeah. As we go forward, to pay attention to these metonymy and to these various objects and what they are doing. Right. So the Creusa, in a sense, she will burn up in the fire of Medea's rage. Right. So the metaphor becomes reality. And. 11:20 Erin: Yeah. 11:21 Wes: And which is appropriate because she is the granddaughter of the sun. She's genetically 25% the sun. Okay, 25% genetically. And these gifts are, I think, associated with the sun in some way. I forget because Jason's like, are you out of your mind giving these gifts of this? You know, these are magical gifts that I think heirlooms of your grandfather, maybe. And why would you be giving this away? So. So if he were smarter, of course he would have taken that as a sign that something's not right. But, yeah, so I think. Yeah, you know, as you were saying, all these different items play their role in these psychological externalizations. In this particular scene, I think the thing that I'm getting at. So I write, I'm bringing up something very early on, before Medea has even come out. And I'm assuming she might be overhearing the chorus and that they are subtly egging her on. It gets a little bit more explicit at the end of the scene where after the nurse kind of takes a poke at poets. Well, musicians. But we take that as Euripides poking at himself for not creating happier, more cheerful songs. That'll do something for us in circumstances where we're really suffering. Then the nurse exits. And that's when the chorus explicitly, more explicitly, takes note of Medea's lamentations and cries and her calls for justice, which it associates with Themis. Actually, this is trying to find this part. Themis, who's the child of Zeus, is more specifically the protectress of oaths. And I point that out because more generally, right, Zeus is the God of justice, but more specifically, it's going to be Themis. And then, you know, the question for me at the very end of this little scene is the question of whether they're trying to calm things down or rile things up. But in any case, that's when Medea comes out and says, I decided to come out because I'm worried you guys are blaming me in some way. If you keep to yourself, people will be quick to judge you. All that stuff that we already talked about in the previous parts. And what's the progression there? Well, I think the one thing that we didn't bring up in this next part is the very famous speech. So she comes out and she's worried about being a foreigner and about people who keep to themselves being judged, and she wants death, and her husband is a traitor. But then she gives a speech about women in general. And I think this is on page 56. So this is, I think, really where this ongoing theme of the plight of women is introduced. It's at line230.56 in our translation. Of all creatures that have life and reason, we women are the most miserable of specimens. In the first place, at great expense we must buy a husband, taking a master to play the tyrant with our bodies. This is an injustice that crowns the other one. And here lies the crucial issue for us, whether we get a good man or a bad. For divorce brings disgrace on a woman, and in the interval, she cannot refuse her husband. Once she finds herself among customs and laws that are unfamiliar, a woman must turn prophet to know what sort of man she will be dealing with as husband, not information gained at home. Now, if we manage this task successfully and share our home with a husband who finds marriage a yoke, the yoke he bears with ease, our lives are to be envied. But if not, we'd be better off dead. When a man becomes dissatisfied with married life, he goes outdoors and finds relief for his frustrations. But we are bound to love one partner and look no further. They say we live sheltered lives in the home, free from danger while they wield their spears in battle. What fools they are. I would rather face the enemy three times over than bear a child once. Probably the most famous line in the play, I'd say. So here we have. In what year are we in 331bc a feminist manifesto. 15:12 Erin: Yeah, well, Euripides was really good friends with Simone de Beauvoir. Well, how much of this? So this idea of buying a husband, obviously this is a reference to the dowry. Right. But I found this speech to be very modern, very moving, but also Greek women had it particularly bad. 15:35 Wes: So 15:37 Erin: I think it's important to make that. 15:39 Wes: Yeah, it's likely there are no women in the audience for this play. 15:43 Erin: Yeah. And no women on stage, of course. These are Corinthian women in quotes. This is Medea, the wife and mother in quotes. 15:50 Wes: This is a drag brunch. 15:51 Erin: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. 15:55 Wes: Watching the play at a drag brunch. 15:57 Erin: Yeah, that would be kind of amazing. Yeah. I mean, not being able to leave the house and things. I mean, these are. These are quite literal. You know, no one nowadays looks back with fondness. No woman would look back with fondness on the Greek Empire and say, wow, I'd love to be back there. Roman Empire. 16:13 Wes: You. 16:13 Erin: You could maybe if you were a wealthy woman, sure. You'd have some freedom. Right. But. But Greek women were treated. Treated particularly badly. That said, I think there are really timeless elements of the speech. I'm afraid of saying something terribly controversial, but I don't know. I mean, I find this to be deeply sympathetic, and I. I can't be in the minority in that feeling. I don't know. Do you. Do you find these concerns? I don't want to say sympathetic, because I feel like I'm setting you up to. To get yourself in trouble. What do you think? 16:45 Wes: Don't sympathize with women and all. 16:47 Erin: Yeah, exactly. 16:48 Wes: Women. I'm on Jason's side. 16:50 Erin: Right, right. 16:51 Wes: Yeah. I mean, of course. Yeah. So this is a really masterful statement of the plight of women. And I've. I looked at the original Greek a little bit just to try and get the poetry of it, but, yeah, you could say this is one of the great statements of that plight. And it's universalizable in a sense. You know, things obviously have changed since ancient Greece, but there are constants here, and some of it is about the nature, I think, of relationships between men and women more broadly, and the nature of the feminine versus the masculine. And, you know, so, for instance, the idea of a man being a tyrant to a woman's body. And of course, divorce brings disgrace, slut, shaming more broadly. But. So the other thing I wanted to bring up here, which I find is interesting, is the. When she finds herself among customs and laws that are unfamiliar, because this is the other recurrent thing that comes up. There are several plights, again, as we mentioned in the first two parts of the discussion, that she has, being gifted and being a woman. But being a foreigner is a big part of this. And being a foreigner is intimately related to the marriage situation, because one leaves one's family, one leaves what one knows one's customs. Of course, normally you don't leave your country with its customs, customs and laws, but there are familial customs as well. In her case, that plight, which is inherent to marriage, in a way, creating. It's almost like founding a country, getting married, creating a new. You have to get used to the foreignness of another person and their ways of doing Things. And ultimately, you create a new way, a new set of customs and laws that your kids will inherit, in a sense. So it's a weird foundational moment at an ethical or normative level. And her marriage plight is enhanced by the fact that she's not even Greek. She doesn't even have the rights of a Greek woman. She's a barbarian. And she doesn't have her home to fall back on and family to fall back on. Part of which is it's partly her fault, you know? So I said she did cut up her brother, so she can't call him up and say, hey, Jason's being a real. 19:08 Erin: Yeah, he can't come and beat up Sonny in the street. You ever touch my sister again. 19:16 Wes: Exactly. So. So she has cut off what's his. 19:20 Erin: Sorry, Carlo, I'm getting my godfather stuff. 19:23 Wes: Right? Yeah. But, yeah, at a thematic level, right, there's the myth in which she does that. And plot wise, right, it's extreme, and it marks off an extreme character, but thematically, it's just. It's a great representation of the trauma of leaving home behind, of leaving family behind, of severing those relations. Even if you don't sever your brother's limbs, and even if, of course, the relationships aren't completely severed, they're altered in this very important way. So we all, in a sense, in relationships. And it doesn't even have to be a love relationship, each relationship, because it's a formative moment where interrupted, influenced by other people, where we're habituated to new ways of doing things. Every new relationship as an influence is this is a recapitulation of this sort of trauma. Marriage is, of course, much more significant, and then a marriage in which you leave your own country even more significant. So it's very important in this play that Medea is a foreigner. And in a sense, she is homeless because that is a big part of her rage. She, in a way, has given up everything for Jason. It's more than him owing her fidelity as per a marriage vow. Right. He owes her for helping him do all his magic tasks, things that should have gotten him a kingdom but didn't. And now he's gonna do it in a much more slimy, backdoor way by marrying a king's daughter. All else failed, and he owes her for this enormous sacrifice that she made. The suggestion is that in a different circumstance, she could have just packed up and gone home and not gotten into some more killing, not gone on another killing spree, but she's truly backed into a corner she's truly here in a desperate state. 21:17 Erin: Yeah, the idea that there is no house anymore, so Jason becomes her home, and when he no longer wants to be the home, that leaves her with nothing. I mean, that's a very common. I think I made a joke in the last recording that if she just hooked up with Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn, and Diane Keaton, everything would have been okay because there was, you know, First Wives Club, which is just one of my comfort movies. I just love that movie so much. You know, they're all able to kind of band together, but they all get, you know, you lose everything, of course, as a woman, especially if you're a certain type of woman with a certain type of marriage or family situation in which you might be a stay at home mom or something like that, right? When someone decides to dump you, you're left with nothing. The switch that happens here in the speech with her metaphors is a really interesting one. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. I think it reveals something of what we're talking about here in that, you know, she first speaks of the husband, as you said, playing tyrant with our bodies. It's taking a master to play the tyrant with our body. So in this metaphor, the woman is so, you know, subject to the husband that it's like a master slave relationship. And then shortly thereafter, she talks of a husband who finds marriage a yoke he bears with ease. So in that metaphor, the husband is kind of like a beast of burden that has to be taught to plow the field or to do, you know, so. So there's both someone who is like a master and also someone who is a creature that has to be sort of tamed into the relationship. Strangely, one would think that those two things would be opposed, but I think they express the same type of thing which is. I mean, they express two sides of the same coin, which is the danger for a woman of marrying the wrong type of man. Like the. Like the. The very real danger that you see on. On, you know, Hulu documentaries about the perfect couple. And it turned out, right, that he. He ended up killing her or, you know, God forbid, or was, you know, abusing her behind the scenes or something like that. Right. In these. These two metaphors that she uses. On the one hand, there's this idea of the man kind of running the house. On the other hand, there's something about the house that might be anathema to a certain type of man that he might want to escape, that he might not take to the marriage. Well, you know, that he might like go after you and. And. And then once he has, you behave quite differently to you once you are in a. Relate in an actual marriage, you know, with paperwork etc, that might behave quite differently to you than he did when he was trying to court you. Right. The idea that one's reality in a relationship fundamentally changes, you know, for. I'm speaking in very broad generalities, but for women, you know, the life and the relationship kind of begins with the marriage and sometimes for men it ends with the marriage. Right. So all of these things are. I think they're factors, they're sort of universal, broadly speaking, sort of universal generalities about the way that, shall we say, a man might want to play the tyrant, but he also might believe that he is actually being placed into certain strictures within the marriage. And in fact he is. Right. And he might be quite reluctant to live under those very necessary, in most cases, strictures. And so there's this kind of odd contradiction where his desire for having power might also mean a desire to escape the sort of bonds and obligations under which the marital state sort of naturally places you. And so all that to say that I think it's interesting that she used that the metaphor kind of changes, or she rather that she uses two different metaphors, but that they actually work, I think quite well in tandem and they express two things that are difficult for a woman who's married to the wrong man. 25:16 Wes: So I think that's very well put. I'll make one more note about this little scene before Creon comes in, which is that she asked the chorus for silence when it comes to. So she says, talking about being abandoned and homeless. She says, there's one small kindness I ask of you if I devise some ways and means of making my husband pay for the suffering of mine. Your silence. Women are timid creatures, for the most part, cowards when it comes to fighting and at the sight of steel. But wrong a woman in love. And nothing on earth has a heart more murderous. Hell hath no fury, hath a precedent, apparently. So what's interesting here is she's asking the chorus to move a bit out of the role of sympathizer to become co conspirator. So that's why I call this the section a conspiracy of women. So the women of Corinth are hopefully supposedly going to be on her side, you know, and. And they will agree to that ultimately, up to the point where they figure out that that includes killing the kids. They're not so on board with that. But anyway, just to make the transition to the next scene, this is where we get the interaction between Medea and Creon. We talked about this a little, a bit in the last parts of the episode. And the talk about, you know, she adds the problem of being gifted in a very famous speech. The problem of being a foreigner and a woman. And, you know, the conflation of her very. Her magical powers with intelligence, which is really interesting. But what she does at the end of the scene I thought was kind of magical in a sense. So her power is not just magic in the literal sense, but she has a certain amount of rhetorical power, which is very important for Euripides because that's, in a way, what he's most interested in, is the power of the rhetorical. And Creon will even say, so she's trying to argue. She's asking him not to exile her. And he comes in very determined to do that. Get out. You know, this is it. Don't even talk to me about it. And she makes her case. And then he says, I have this gut feeling she's hatching an evil plan. And that makes me trust her even less. And the fact that she's such a good speaker, clever in controlling her tongue, as he puts it, makes it only seem even more devious. Which of course, he's. Ultimately, he's. He's right about it. And then he says, you can't change my decision with words. And here's how she gets him. She ultimately will get him to agree to let her stay for one day before exile. And she does it by invoking love of country. So she says she yearns for Colchis. And then that's when Creon. And that. So this is the masterful point where Creon says, you're right. Only my children win more love from me than my country. Well, so here, in a way, she's. It's not masterful yet. I think she's poking around, right? So she brings up this yearning for her homeland and Creon associates to children. And that's where Medea sees an in by appealing to the plight of her children to get Creon to let her stay one more day. So that's when she gets on her knees and begs and says, at least show my children pity by allowing us to stay one more day while we get things in order. And Creon says, yeah, this is probably a bad. Not a good idea what I'm going to. Doing. I'm inviting disaster, but I'm just going to do it anyway. She got Me with the children thing. Anyway, I thought that was very, very well done by Euripides that you see these arguments playing out. You see the, the rhetorical combat play out in an interesting way, and you see how she gets him to switch his position. So there's a site, there's an interesting psychological realism to the way Euripides presents this. 29:05 Erin: I love that you're pointing this out. I'm about to say something very, very controversial, which is that I think this play in this moment and then in the awful deed, right. Demonstrates what can be really bad about love, like how love can be an incredibly destructive thing. And I'm not necessarily talking about lust or whatever it is that Jason and Medea seem to feel for each other or what Jason seems to now be feeling for Creusa and not for Medea, which is related to this, I think, but it's not quite the same thing. Creon says, I'm no tyrant in my heart, but a king. Yet in showing respect to petitioners, I have too often invited disaster. And now too, woman, I see my own error. But for all that, your wish will be granted. So he's basically allowing himself to be moved emotionally in spite of his better judgment because of pity he feels for Medea because of what she's invoked and because of his love for his child, which is obviously, you know, he obviously is a father who loves his daughter, right. And so Medea's ability to play on his heartstrings is what will be his undoing. And I. It just, it strikes me now that I'm looking at this section and what Creon says, how similar it is to what Medea says when she is about to kill her children. She says, I am well aware how terrible a crime I am about to commit, but my passion is master of my reason. Passion that causes the greatest suffering in the world. In Medea's case, of course, this passion is not something that is elevated in the. In the way that Creon's error originates from a kind of high caliber emotion, right? Pity, sympathy for her, empathy for her, love for his daughter, but they have the same outcome. And I think this is something that's really astute, which is that sometimes love can be really bad. Having nice feelings towards things actually can be really. I'm not. This is not my manifesto against love. I think there's something really true here about the way that emotion, even positive emotion, when it clouds reason, that's where love becomes. Becomes something that could be quite dangerous and quite twisted. 31:13 Wes: You know, if you were to cast this character, you cast him as someone who is a pushover, not a strong guy, but who's. When he walks in, in this scene, he's trying to represent himself that way. But you can see it coming. You can see that he's gonna not be able to hold up. That would be the way, you know, I think, to play this. If you were putting on a live performance and then it, you know, he's coming in, he's all bluster, but in the end he can have his heartstrings pulled. And you know, I'm no tyrant in my heart, but a king. Yet this could be disastrous. I mean, you could speculate that there's something psychologically self destructive about him. I actually thought reading this about the many times as a residence director of a transitional home for the mentally ill where I was in this position where I had be people begging me not to kick them out and sometimes crying. I've literally been in this position of 32:09 Erin: oh, no wonder why you're not sympathetic to Medea the way I think you should be. 32:15 Wes: After seven years of that, you get a very thick skin. So. 32:18 Erin: Yeah. But Medea is really gifted though. 32:19 Wes: You also begin to react against the manipulation of your feelings. And there were, there were moments in which I had they this very, this Creon moment where I said where someone was crying and I'm like, oh man, I'm going to give this person another chance. Even though I know this is just going to be bad. It's going to be bad, but I'm going to do it. And I learned not to do that. I learned to repress the Creon instinct just to give in to feelings of pity. 32:48 Erin: Well, what you point out in the quote is perhaps his self concept is at stake. The part you focused on was I'm not a tyrant, I'm a king. So this is someone who's attacked to having to align with certain positive feelings about himself and not having his self concept threatened. And of course there's going to be something. There's going to be an internal conflict if he believes that he is a good and just and whatever king and he throws out this woman and her two children. Right. Even if she is a dangerous, scary quarter sun kind of woman. Should we then move to her confrontation with Jason? This is just like her having several different confrontations with men. 33:32 Wes: Right. So the. Yeah, before that. So we get into. So this is what I call. I, I think Creon exits and that's the end of Act 1. In my, in the way I've divvied Things up. The next thing that happens, before we get to the fight with Jason, there's a little scene with the chorus where the chorus is worried about where she's going to go. What are you going to do? And the chorus is. Is not in a happy place. And. But Medea is now a little bit manic. She's quite elated. She even says, my present situation is by no means terrible. It's the first time we've seen her in a good mood. And. Right. So she's just gotten a big win and now she's. She's ready to scheme and to figure out, you know, how she's going to get her revenge. And she defines it, you know, I'm going to kill him, which he doesn't end up doing, which is an interesting thing we can discuss, but I'm gonna. And I'm gonna kill the princess and I'm going to kill the king. She fantasizes how to do it, and we'll do it with poison. And then she goes on to thinking about where to go, which at the end of this act will be solved by a little bit of a mini deus ex machina. But in the play, when Aegeus will show up, little mini deus ex machina, and she will convince him to let him let her come to Athens, which it turns out to be, you know, which is very significant. And Euripides calls attention to this on the fact that it might not shed such a positive light on their wonderful Athenian city. And then again, think about the connection between Corinth and Athens. Right? That's their conflict. That really leads to the whole Peloponnesian War. So she kind of waxes in the, you know, here about the, you know, ha, ha, ha. This is what I'm going to do. This is the evil I'm going to perpetrate. And she'll even say, you know, she has the knowledge to do this. And what's more, we are women, quite helpless in doing good, but surpassing any master craftsman in working evil can't win them all. 35:26 Erin: Women who are listening to this episode, Euripides can only do so much. 35:32 Wes: Yeah. One of the other things she brings up here is they're worried about being mocked, which comes up over and over again as a key motivation for killing her children and the revenge that she's going to get. The thing that she seems to worry about most is, is not losing Jason, but the kind of status injury involved. And she's being disrespected, which as 25% the sun you do not let yourself be disrespected. 35:57 Erin: Yeah. I think this is crucial, and this is something that is really. You may laugh at this, but this, to me, is part of why she's so sympathetic. I mean, basically, Jason has left her because he wants to sleep with a younger woman. And we're even told explicitly in the text that. That this is a younger blonde woman. This is deeply humiliating. 36:17 Wes: Well, this is her right. Her. Her claim is he wants to sleep with a younger woman. His claim is that he wants power and status. 36:26 Erin: He's. Yeah. Involving sleeping with a younger woman. That's. That's what the. That's 90% of what the status is about. And. And I don't take any. Anything he says in. In the subsequent scene to be totally without. I mean, she's being manipulative and being evasive and stuff, but he is, too. 36:45 Wes: See, I give him more credit because he is marrying into a royal family, and I don't. 36:51 Erin: Yes, but the nurse knows from the beginning that he has the hots for Creusa. The chorus knows it. You know, like, everybody knows his true motivation. 36:59 Wes: Yeah. Don't get me wrong. He probably has the hots. Yeah, I have no doubt he has the hots for her. But, I mean, the question psychologically for Medea is, is it jealousy because he loves another, or is she being disrespected? And those are two different. Those are two different things. And of course, psychologically for him, yes, he might want a trophy wife, but he also could feel just lustful towards someone who's younger and then also want to marry into family. All those. Those are three different motivations. 37:30 Erin: I don't see how those are two different things for Medea, though. 37:32 Wes: So I think, because one might lament the loss of someone else's love, and then one might lament the disrespect and mockery and humiliation. So I see humiliation and loss of love, the feeling of loss of love as being on as. You know, they often get fused together and people have trouble disentangling them in the same way that people have trouble disentangling what Freud called ordinary suffering from wounded pride. So, yes, they're very hard to disentangle. But what I'm saying, what I'm pointing to is a distinction between ordinary suffering, the loss of a lover, and then wounded pride, which is surplus suffering on top of that, which is what she's very focused on, which is not uncommon. This is what I get focused on. What many patients and people I've worked with in mental health get focused On. They're very focused on. On this question of justice and pride and humiliation, and they suffer tremendously for it. So they suffer for that far more than they suffer for the underlying grievance, which is, I just didn't get what I want. 38:36 Erin: I mean, certainly I see the distinction between these two things. I'm thinking about the unities here and how quickly this play moves and how quickly after her abandonment, all of this takes place. And I guess I just. I don't. She doesn't give herself enough time to feel sad about, you know, she's in the middle of the, like, immediate aftermath of this, which is just. You're just going to see red, right? You're just going to be enraged because she hasn't even really registered the loss of this person yet. I mean, she has enough to be angry, but not enough to be sad. It would take more time for that to actually happen. Because right now, she's in. She's in anger mode. 39:15 Wes: Yeah. Sadness. And sadness is the most advanced emotion. 39:19 Erin: Yeah. 39:19 Wes: And this circuit. It's the most mature and advanced emotion that it's. And. And it's often the one that people are allergic to. And. And because it's. There's a powerlessness to it. And the power position is to be angry and to think about revenge. The power position is to think of. Think of the situation in terms of a slight, as Aristotle would say. For Aristotle, there's always a slight involved in anger. There's always a narcissistic injury, a wound to one's pride, a disrespect. She's been dissed. So there's much more power in inhabiting that, you know, you. Don't you mess with me. Well, now you're gonna reap the whirlwind. That's a power position. But saying I'm. I lost something and I'm sad about it, of course, is not. Of course. Yes, in the long run, of course, we're far better off with sadness, Unless we have a chariot who's gonna come pick us up? Like, you know, Chariot Uber, you know, from the sun. Hey. Yeah. What? I'm gonna kill everyone. Then could you pick me up right afterwards? 40:17 Erin: Well, I mean, a further complication to this is there almost. There almost can't be a mature sadness because there was never a mature love in the first place. I mean, this is the. This is. The problem is that she loves Jason far too much, if we can even call it love. Right. She's obsessed with him. She's willing to throw everything away for him. She has an unbridled, you know, any. Any moderate modifier that we can use to describe the way that normal love is, does not apply here. 40:44 Wes: Yeah. 40:44 Erin: And. And this is what is so essential to the killing of the children, is that she loved Jason and therefore hates him now more than she loves the children. You know, this is a. This is a couple that is obsessed with themselves, and meanwhile the kids are just, like, doing whatever, kind of being ignored. I mean, this is the way I have like a very, you know, I have like a detailed picture in my mind of what I think this marriage was like when it was quote, unquote, working. You know what I think Jason's deeper motivations are? I'd like to think that it's all there in the text, but I am reading a lot of modern types of paradigms into this perhaps, but I do think that Madea has too much love for Jason, that this was a couple that probably, like, ignored their kids and their kids just had to hang out by themselves while their parents got it on because they were too busy, you know, concerned about themselves and their relationship. And that's the way that I understand the crime at the end. So because of that, because this was never a mature relationship, she's not going to have a mature response to losing it, basically. And she's not going to have a measured, sad, adult mature response, not only because of the time in which she does, you know, she doesn't have the time to develop that, to get past those initial emotions, but. But because this relationship was toxic, you know, to use that term. Right. It's a toxic relationship. It was overly in mental enmeshed, and she loses too much of herself. 42:09 Wes: Right. 42:10 Erin: In the loss of the relationship. 42:11 Wes: So we get an exaggerated version of the selflessness, which is part of any relationship to some degree. But. But this is exaggerated and it's totalized because. And she does give up everything, right? 42:24 Erin: Yeah. 42:25 Wes: Which is part of what betraying her father and killing her brother represents. And then she gives up everything, and then he's all. He's all she has. She. He is not just lover, but he is home, he is country, he is Homeland. And to lose him is to lose all of that, all anchoring points psychologically. And these are identity, right? These are points of identification. Country, family. It's about more than love. It's about who you are. Her, who she is became Jason. And I think in one version of the myth, it's basically she's been given a potion or something. Right. It's not even a natural, like the love is induced naturally. Right. It's just she's been. Yeah, she's been drugged into this crazy state of mind towards Jason. And the way Euripides represents him in this play, I don't think it's a modern. You know, it's modern at all. It's very explicitly. He's very explicitly characterized as a douchebag and as obtuse, as emotionally obtuse. I think that's very important because his deficits, in a way, are a mirror of hers. You can call her overly involved in emotion or passion, whatever you want to say, but he's too uninvolved in that. Which is how he gets his wife or his wife to be and her father killed. And which is part of why he riles up Medea so much. It's not. Not just the act. She'll even say to him, you know, if you come to me and talk to me about this beforehand, and he'll say, oh, yeah, you really would have been reasonable about this if I had done that. But she does have a point, which is that it's not just that he loves another. He is really is disrespecting her. She's not seen by him. She, in a way, has had all the power, and he doesn't know it. Right. She's the magician. She's the one who did all the great deeds, really. And he doesn't even see that he's obtuse to that. So this is someone waking up to the fact that not just that this person doesn't love her, but he's never this. This person who's the anchor of her identity, has never even actually seen her for who she is. 44:30 Erin: Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. You know, one wonders why he's with her in the first place, except for just, you know, that she was. She was there. 44:38 Wes: I mean, he's a user. I mean, I just think that that is the characterization. I don't think I'm reading into the play to say he's characterized as a user. And that's what Euripides makes Euripides so interesting. He's taking that myth and he's giving us this very realistic and unflattering psychological portrait. Okay, let me take this mythological character who is that person psychologically, and boom, you get this everyday, ordinary person on stage. 45:07 Erin: Yeah, you're really helping me to understand your characterization of him and as emotionally obtuse, because I saw him in the exchanges with Medea as being really manipulative and basically just trying to justify the lust that he feels for this younger woman and make Medea look bad and crazy. And I mean, she. She is crazy, of course, but, like, to make her look worse than she is, to make her, in her very justified rage, this, like, oh, you're just this crazy, emotional woman. Like, what are you on your period? You know, like, that kind of thing. 45:38 Wes: It is. It is a very ordinary male female dynamic, too, which is part of what makes it so interesting. It's exaggerated, but it is also very ordinary. 45:46 Erin: Yeah, well. Well, but what I love about what you're showing is that it's like, of course. But he is obtuse, though. Like, he could do that sort of attempt, feeble attempt at manipulation and also be deeply obtuse. And I think you're right that he doesn't realize the fact that he is playing with a quarter fire and then. 46:01 Wes: And that obtuseness is stereotypically masculine. And I think there's a grain of truth to that. So it is exaggerated here, which is why I called him autistic or on the spectrum. 46:10 Erin: Yeah. 46:11 Wes: Which hopefully people don't take offense at. But that is kind of like if you. If you amp up masculinity to a certain degree and. Right, right. Masculinity is supposed to be heroic here. I have the big muscles. I'm going to slay the dragon. But at a psychological level, if you amp it up too much, it's just, oh, you're on the spectrum. So he's a big jock. Yeah, but he. 46:31 Erin: And she's a crazy harpy. 46:33 Wes: Yeah, yeah, but he doesn't get it psychologically. Yeah. And also, she really is also crazy, right? 46:40 Erin: I mean. Yeah, like. Like kind of crazy in quotes. I think it's important that she's not. I do think she's kind of in her right mind with most of the decisions that she makes, but that's splitting hairs at this point, for the purposes of this conversation. She is crazy. Yeah. I mean, this is. This is like a woman's. A woman's worst nightmare. Like waking up and realizing that the person that you're with actually never understood you or doesn't appreciate you at all in any kind of complex or deep or satisfactory way that they just. You were the one who was around and was convenient at the time that they wanted to commit to someone because it was expedient. Right. And this is like a very, very deep and real psychological fear. But I think that what Pasolini does really well in his adaptation of the story is makes Jason just like a beautiful man. That's the Only way that this makes any sense. So, yeah, of course, yes, he's a jock, right? But yeah, like this is. He is a hunk. He's gorgeous. So it's like, okay, we get it, Medea. Because otherwise it just doesn't like on the page, you know, you just think to yourself, like, you know, how did she even find him appealing? Because he's so, you know, so, so the, the, the beauty angle, the, the male beauty piece of this. If we're going to imagine someone who has, you know, the look of a Greek hero that works in the Pasolini version on paper, he's just. It's just like Medea. Why, like you. Yeah, you could have had anyone. Why didn't you just, you know, go to Colchis University and find. Find a professor who might have appreciated your intellectual talents. Instead you fell for this. Just meathead. 48:23 Wes: So we're almost to the fight between her and Jason. I just want to point to one more thing before that happens, because it is part of this whole battle of the sexes theme. She, right, she's laid out her diabolical plans and she's in a very manic ha, ha, ha type of state. And then the strophe, you know, associates those plans with the deceit involved in those plans with Jason's breaking of oaths. So it's noting with displeasure, I think, the deceit involved in what she's doing. But then it also says, recompense is coming for the female sex. No more shall women endure the burden of ill repute. Which is, of course, an interesting, quite psychologically interesting given that what she's doing is going to be horrific and involve. Involves some deceit. The antistrophe agrees with the strophe in this case. And men will cease to harp on our. Or songs. All the poetry in general will cease to harp on our faithlessness. And if women had musical ability, then she. I think the antistrophe is saying this would have made. So antistrophe is speaking for women here. She would have made my song ring out against the sex of men. The Rolling Ages have much to tell our side much as well as men's. And then they kind of repeat her stuff about, you know, having no husband, being in exile and all that stuff. So very explicitly, her revenge is supposed to be against Jason is supposed to be representative of women's revenge against men. And the an is saying, if only, you know, if I were a poet, this is the way I would do it. And of course, you know, it's. It's a joke. It's it's, it's tongue in cheek at this point. Euripides is doing that, right? And then that's when Jason will come in and we will get the big showdown. 50:14 Erin: But first they form a union. Solidarity now. Anyway, yeah, should we end this episode and start talking about. 50:24 Wes: Yeah. So that's the end of part three of our discussion. Part four, we will get into the A verbal showdown between Madea and Jason. 50:35 Erin: Thank you, thank you. And thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast please send your questions, feedback and episode requests to [email protected] if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook subtextpodcast and on Twitter enjoysubtext.