Love Dishonored in Euripides’ “Medea” (Part 5)

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 0:20 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. 0:32 Wes: Okay, welcome to Part five of our six part series on Medea. We had just gotten done discussing Medea's escape plan, which involves kindly old Aegeus from Athens, Athens to save the day, even though he apparently is not fully aware of her moral character. I know you want to defend her, but we'll fight about that later. I think where we concluded in the last part is I mentioned the aspersion kind of cast on Athens, or the shadow cast over Athens by the potential association of Medea with Athens, where Athens is representative of these new ideals, or I don't know how new they are, but they've become very important in light of Socrates at the time that Euripides is writing. So ideals of temperance and rationality and associated ideals and Medea, in a way I think represents more of the instinctual side. So if you wanted to really look at this play in the at the most general thematic level level, you might say what Euripides is doing is he's giving a critique of Athenian norms, Athenian mores, which is not unusual for him. And the critique is that the focus on rationality, on temperance, on the type of things that Jason thinks he represents. Although of course he's portrayed as foolish in this play. Overly focusing on that can make in fact make one foolish like Jason and doesn't pay sufficient respect to the instinctual side of human nature. And when you don't pay respect to the instinctual side of human nature, it comes back to kill your children by way of your Own hands. 2:22 Erin: I have my blood red nail polish on right now, too. To really drive the point, I just clawed into the. 2:29 Wes: For listeners. Yeah, Erin just showed her claws. Sorry, we're gonna call them. That was where we left off. And now I think we are kind of at the midpoint, the very midpoint of the play here and the next stage, as we move from the scene between Medea and Aegeus to her deceiving Jason, killing the royals, all that stuff. 2:51 Erin: At some point in one of the previous parts, I tried to make the argument, though, that there was something sort of hyperlogical and rational about Medea's infamous act. And I think in the end, it kind of, you know, as we were talking about with other elements of Medea's character, it sort of swings all the way around. So she ends up having it both ways. She ends up being a sort of figure of both masculinity and femininity, of logic and irrationality, of. But maybe you weren't really convinced by that, But I was looking at, you know, just after Aegeus leaves, which is, I think, where we're gonna pick up anyway, when Jason comes and Medea pretends to play nice. You know, I was reflecting on her performance of apology and pretending to be okay with everything, and I see this as being a really important prelude to the act of killing the children. So, you know, it seems to me that because Jason won't take her pain, her anger, her humiliation seriously, her sort of irrationality seriously, she has to find a way to be taken seriously. And that seems to involve the need to shock. Yeah, she must shock him. Wake him up in a way. And so to do this, I think she first, as a. As a prelude, dons the disguise of the agreeable, weak woman. You know, she says, what a perverse creature I am. Why do I madly resent those who have my interests at heart? Why do I view as enemies the rulers of the land and my husband, who is doing what is best for me in marrying a princess and fathering brothers for my children? Shall I not give up my anger? What is the matter with me? Are the gods not generous? Do I not have children? Have I forgotten that I am in exile and in need of friends? When I reflected on this, I realized the full extent of my folly and the futility of my anger. So now you have my thanks. Indeed. I consider you showed good judgment in making this new match for us. I have been the foolish one, you know. So she, you know, you're smart, I'm dumb, you're sane. I'M emotional and crazy, silly me, you know, and so she leans into this, you know, stereotype of womanhood to, I think, to make the shock of contrast all the greater when she then hits Jason with that surprise attack. And what's the most surprising, least stereotypical thing a proper woman, a proper wife, a proper mother would do, of course, is kill her own children. 5:13 Wes: Wait, why is that? Why is that most proper? 5:15 Erin: No, what's the most surprising, least stereotypical thing a proper woman would do? You know, so. So she pulls the rug out from under Jason and from out from under the stereotype that she momentarily leans into in order to provide this kind of contrast. 5:32 Wes: I think, yeah, she's displaying. She's displaying the quality, I would call it the quality of rukh ruthlessness, which one might think is quintessentially powerful or masculine. There's a question, you know, we could have a conversation about, well, how accurate is that? But one might think ruthlessness is. And that certainly is the quality, I think, willing to do anything to accomplish one's goal, no matter what it costs, even if it's one's own children. 6:00 Erin: I mean, she does it seemingly even though it hurts her much more than it hurts him. Him. But I'm interested in the logic of that, you know, in basically saying, okay, you want to treat me like I never happened. You want to throw everything away and start over, you want to erase my contributions to your life, then even if it hurts me more than it hurts you, I'll do it. I'll show. I'll carry out the consequences of your thoughts. And so, you know, in a way, what she does is a kind of hyper real, hyper logical conclusion to Jason's desire for freedom and for extricating himself from his oath. And at the same time, while being crazy, it therefore also takes seriously Jason's misogynistic beliefs about the craziness of women. You know, you think I'm crazy, I'll show you crazy. You know, I'm so crazy I will kill my maternal impulses and act as cold blooded as a man to get what I want. So it both plays on and against these misogynistic stereotypes by using her sort of crazy feminine insanity to show how strong and cool and unemotional a woman can be. So I do think she has it. She has it both ways with the murders. Thematically, it's really complex and fascinating to me both ways. 7:14 Wes: And you mean rational and irrational? 7:16 Erin: Yeah, I mean, and it's both misogynistic and anti misogynistic. 7:19 Wes: So it could Be rational. It can be rational relative, relative to a certain goal. 7:24 Erin: Right. That's what I mean. Yeah. 7:26 Wes: Right. So there's hypothetical reason, or what's called instrumental rationality, where it's just, if I do this, then this, and you figure out what's going to get you what you want. And what you want can be as crazy as I'll get out. But the rationality is in the method, and if it works, it works to get you what you want. So there's a question of the rationality of the means and then the rationality of the goals. And then when you look at the goals, you can think of Kantian terms, of Kantian categorical rationality. What do I have to do, regardless of whether it's going to make me happy, regardless of my goals? It's just morality and then morality in the more contemporary sense. And if you were thinking in terms of ancient Greek virtue ethics, happiness would be the ultimate goal. And the. That for Aristotle, to some extent Plato and Socrates, it involves a certain. Well, for Aristotle, it's activity in accordance with virtue. There's this close tie between one's virtue in this broader ethical sense than Kantian strict morality. So it could be courage, it could be magnanimity. These are the relevant virtues or forms of excellence that complete human character that constitute a good for human character. So the critique in terms of. Right, we're just talking about Aegeus and Athenian, the Athenian concept of rationality, the critique in terms of that sort of rationality as well. Is she temperate? Is her soul properly balanced? And the balance, right, is between. There's the rational side, and then the irrational side is double. For the ancient Greeks, it's. It's eros, it's love, and then it's honor or spiritedness. Thumos. And one of the interesting kind of lines of reflection in this play is if, if she is irrational, is this about love or is it about pride and honor? Because those two things are so often mixed up and. And as I've said many times, we often don't know which is at stake psychologically. We are often quite confused about that. That. Right. So if she loses, is she upset because she's losing Jason and Jason is just so wonderful, or has she been dishonored? I think it's really more about dishonor. And again, this is a theme for Euripides. Right. The Bacchae is all about Dionysus being dishonored. People don't pay him sufficient respect. He is also a representative of the instinctual. I think this is Kind of Euripides whole line of thought, which is quite ironic in that that's Nietzsche's critique of Euripides, is that he doesn't pay enough respect to the instinctual, to the Dionysian side of things. But leaving that aside. So anyway, just going back to. So, yeah, I think there are many different conceptions of rationality at work. And I think if you want to point to her rationality, she's got plenty of instrumental rationality once she's decided what she wants in accomplishing it. She's got a lot of rhetorical ability, the ability to persuade with Creon, with Jason, as we'll see here in a second with Aegeus. And I think maybe the rationality that you're pointing to, how do we categorize that? She's sort of exposing the destructiveness of Jason's logic. She's bringing that out in the open for him to see. So is that just revenge? What is that right, if we say let me show you what you're doing to me, or let me show you what you're like by externalizing the emotional dynamic, making it more obvious, killing the children. It's one very good way to externalize anyway. 11:13 Erin: Yeah, I like that. The exposure of the. Maybe, maybe the lie of logic or the consequences of logic. She's trying to expose what is corrupt in Jason's own behavior, what his behavior actually signifies. He's telling himself, right, that he's doing this for logical ends, but he's taking an irrational route, perhaps, or not irrational, I suppose, an immoral route to get to his end, which is, as we've already discussed to this, this higher status in society that he desires because he's a social climber. And it seems to me Medea, therefore, you know, if her goal is maybe a two pronged one, I think it's to hurt Jason because he has humiliated her, and also to show that she's not weak, which is basically an extension of revenge against the humiliation visited on her. So those I think are pretty rational ends for me. Okay, I want to hurt someone who hurt me. But the means by which she does this is irrational. So killing the kids so that she hurts even herself in order to get back at someone. 12:21 Wes: Well, why is hurting someone who hurts you rational? 12:25 Erin: Well, I suppose it's understandable. 12:28 Wes: Destructive. 12:29 Erin: Okay. Yeah, so. So you don't think that's rational at all? I mean, I. I guess I don't mean like capital R rational. I mean like it's. 12:34 Wes: Well, it's natural. It's natural to have that feeling. Yeah. Okay. 12:37 Erin: I mean, it's more natural because it's truer to a kind of a real emotion than Jason is being. And that. That's kind of. I think the contrast. One of the contrasts that I want to draw is that Jason is kind of lying to himself. And in a way, he's. We've already suggested this, that he's acting as though emotions don't matter at all. And though Medea's goals are kind, emotional goals, there's something truer, I think, about what she's trying to accomplish or. Or maybe not. I mean, you know, obviously they're. They're both terrible. Like, we've, We've already said this, but I think there's something of a corrective about what Medea does that is like a lesson that Jason has to learn in a. In a way. And she's. And she's. She's one hell of a teacher. So. So she functions as a kind of a thematic corrective to his banishment of. Of emotion and feelings from his considerations. Something like that. 13:30 Wes: Yeah. I mean, I think we have to. So for each of the categories, Eros and reason and Pride, Honor, spiritedness, whatever you want to call it, from the critical standpoint, we treat them as neutral. So we don't presume that rationality is the right way to go. We don't presume that love is the right way to go. Because presumably Euripides is critiquing the rosy picture of rationality that his contemporaries seem to have bought into. So he wants to look at the dark side of quote, unquote, rationality. And in that sense, maybe rationality, too much rationality, looks unreasonable because it's not plugged into social reality. Jason ignores that it's illogical to ignore the fact that someone is going to be hurt, that their pride is going to be wounded, and that they're going to be otherwise hurt by your own behaviors. You can have all the rationality in the world, but if you can't get into the head of another person, there's a data point, an important data point that's missing. Right. If you can't empathize fully, then you don't have the data right to. Or the premises to plug into your syllogism or algorithm in order to get the right output. So if Jason is disconnected from emotional and social reality, he can be as rational as he likes, and it's not going to do him any good. And maybe part of the lesson is to. Not just for Jason, but for all of us, is to Give us a very visual, very, very startling and concrete representation of those other sides of our nature and the fact that they cannot be ignored. And Jason's own goals, of course, are quite right. It's not as if. As if he's any different. Different from Medea in the sense that he may or may not be after a young hottie, may or may not be after love. He disputes that. He certainly is after his legacy. Right. So he's also after pride and honor. He says he's after security, which. That's his excuse, really. Right. I'm just trying to get security for both of us. Because his legacy in terms of children with the new wife, that doesn't help Medea any. And he can't harp on that too much. Look, I'm doing a great. Medea's only benefit out of the. He can get all kinds of status embellishment through his connection to the royal family. She gets nothing. In fact, she gets the opposite. In a way, she's humiliated by contrast. So all he can do to sell all this whole package is say, oh, this is about safety. This is about security. This is about us having a homeland to stay in. Since we are essentially homeless. We are essentially people without a country. He has to. So in a way, he's leveraging this vulnerability, this predicament that Medea's in, in the sense that she doesn't have a country and the thing that she did to herself for him. She sacrificed home and homeland in order to help him. And now he's saying to her, well, look, I can provide you with that, but only if I betray you. So it's a sick contradiction. 16:43 Erin: It's very sick. And I think it bears emphasis as perhaps we already covered, because it's important. And Medea makes this point. She, as a consequence of this, would have to serve Creusa as the female head of the household. This is really crucial because this is representative, I think, of what a tremendous status this is. This is not a divorce where, okay, you have to watch the second wife, maybe move into your old house and kind of take your place, but at least you can move to a condo in a neighboring town and try to start over. And not, you know, this is, you're still in the house and you have to wait on her hand and foot. You know, it's. This is a level of humiliation which is actually psychologically unbearable, especially when you're royal and divine and better than everybody else. 17:34 Wes: Well, getting on, getting cut off in traffic is psychologically unbearable for me. So to think of, yeah, this level of humiliation is. 17:45 Erin: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, I think it's important because I think that, you know, so. So often in these stories or, or in ancient Greek culture, male humiliation is treated with great seriousness and as something which is almost physical in its very real consequences. And yet where there actually are in many cases, or I don't know if in many more cases, but truly in many cases demonstrable physical consequences for women to great loss in status, it's somehow not treated as psychologically of the sort of same weight as a man who's been reduced in status. And I think that this play shows that women can be humiliated too, and they might get a little upset though. That said, one of the things that strikes me as you're talking about this as being corrective for Jason, a way of externalizing consequences for Jason. It makes very apparent to me how Jason, I suppose, is the actual tragic hero of this story because he's not the titular character of the play, but he is the one who experiences the recognition and reversal. No, I mean, he's the one who fulfills, you know, the Aristotelian precepts for the Greek tragic hero, the central figure. 19:00 Wes: Interesting. Well, that's part of the weirdness of Euripides. 19:04 Erin: Yeah, right. 19:05 Wes: She is the quote unquote tragic hero. But of course the tragedy is self inflicted in the end. Right. The tragedy for her is losing her children. Even though she kills the children, she does it to get Jason, but that's what she loses. 19:20 Erin: Yeah, that's true. 19:21 Wes: The unusual part is for her not to lose everything. The tragic hero is supposed to lose everything and preferably to die. But she gets lifted out by the chariot of the sun and she's going to be. 19:34 Erin: How's that for social climbing? Climbing up to the sky. 19:37 Wes: Yeah, it's one of the critiques of Euripides. It's one of the odd things about his plays. So, you know, the question is, well, what is he trying to say with that? It can't just be he's being sloppy and he knows what's supposed to happen to the tragic hero. He's playing with that idea and they're getting away scot free. So they don't learn the lesson. We learn the lesson. Somehow Jason learns the lesson. But also we learn the lesson. The audience becomes the. The receptacle of. Or some other character, I suppose, becomes a receptacle of whatever transformation the tragic hero is supposed to undergo or the. Or of a sense of loss. And if it's us, it's the loss of. I Suppose the sense of moral certainty, it's a sense of our ethical bearings, like, okay, rationality and temperance and all that stuff is good. That's our framework. If Euripides is trying to of make us unsettled by that, then. Right. The loss sort of stands outside of the play in a way. 20:41 Erin: Yeah. Another big lesson is be nice to your wife, if only out of fear because she could be a lot crazier than you think. So, you know, maybe be nice to her every once in a while. 20:53 Wes: Well, he already knew she was pretty crazy. He'd seen her do a lot of crazy shit. So for him. And he had benefited. 21:00 Erin: I can't say this enough. 21:01 Wes: Yeah. And he had benefited. Benefited from all that. So, yeah, if you're in a Bonnie and Clyde situation and your wife is doing a lot of illegal, murderous stuff for you, including to her own family, that's a red flag. Well, it's a red flag. You know, then if you have to part ways, if things don't work out, when you take care, you use some caution now. You approach that. 21:26 Erin: You know, I want to reframe this, I want to refrain reframe this. It's like, okay, so, so Medea's the heavy because, you know, she actually has the means to. To murder people in creative ways, but she's doing it for Jason, so. So they're not so much Bonnie and Clyde as. He's Charles Manson. Okay, so she's the one who's actually carrying out the murders, but he should still be held responsible too. He's going to be thrown in jail too. She does it for him. I mean, come on. 21:50 Wes: Yeah, I mean, I, I'm not trying to absolve him of responsibility. 21:56 Erin: No, he's crazy too. 21:57 Wes: But I, I just think. Yeah. The Charles Mansell Mansion Manson example, though the power in a way was with Manson and the others were just. 22:06 Erin: But she is brainwashed by love. 22:08 Wes: Brainwashed. She has the power. That's the important thing to understand. 22:12 Erin: That's right. 22:13 Wes: She's the magician. She's the granddaughter of the sun. Yes. And her downfall is Eros, you know, at first, but then also thumos. So she's made to fall in love and that comes into bitter conflict with her pride. But we would expect her to be proud being a semi divine and having all these powers. So. Yeah. Did you want to say anything more about how she does that? This is the third now kind of deception that she's engaged in rhetorically. 22:46 Erin: This is the most effective part of the play for me because it's so painful because she's being. She's crying over the children, and we, the audience, imagining that we don't know the outcome, and we're sitting there for the first performance, you know, believe that she's crying for one reason. And, you know, we're kind of the people against which the irony, the dramatic irony is being affected in a way. Jason as well. But Euripides and Medea both are kind of tricking us. The children come out on stage and Medea cries over them. Right. 23:17 Wes: You know, she explains her crying by saying she's thinking of her future sorrows, when, you know, as the sorrows that are going to come with exile. But also I think the happiness that the quarrel is over is that Right. And then the chorus leader says, fresh tears spring from these eyes of mine as well. I pray that this trouble may not proceed to greater lengths from now. Which is a bit odd because the chorus knows her plan, but it seems to be taken in as well. 23:49 Erin: Yes. You know, another. Another element of this complexity in her crying is Medea says to Jason, when he kind of notices that she's started crying. It is nothing. I was thinking about these children. Jason says, no more fears now. I will settle this business. Well, Medea says, I will do as you say. I will take you at your word. A woman is a soft creature, made for. For weeping. You're real soft. And Jason says, why all these sighs over the children now? It is too much. She says, I gave them birth. When you prayed for a long life for them. I felt a pang of pity at the thought that this might not happen. But I have touched on only some of the reasons for your coming to talk to me. The rest I will come to now, since it is the royal will that I be banished from Corinth, and I am well aware this is the best course for me not to continue living here as an embarrassment to you in the. The king, with people thinking I am bitterly opposed to the royal family, I will leave this land for exile. But to ensure that your hands guide our children's upbringing, ask Creon to waive banishment for them. She gets Jason to commit to allowing the children to stay so that they won't be banished, which really seems. I mean, we can argue about whether or not it would be possible for the children to have any kind of good outcome if they leave with Medea, considering that she's going to go somewhere else where she's going to get kicked out of. She seems to be routinely kicked out of places for her behavior. 25:09 Wes: Well, she's Got Athens set up at 25:10 Erin: this point, she does, but then she gets kicked out of Athens too. In the mythology, what does she do 25:16 Wes: to get kicked out of Athens? How many people does she kill? 25:20 Erin: I don't remember what she does something with Aegeus. 25:23 Wes: Oh, wait, don't they get involved? 25:27 Erin: Yeah. Doesn't she end up. Up becoming the other woman over there? 25:30 Wes: Yeah, yeah, she gets involved with him. Yeah. 25:32 Erin: Yeah. She doesn't learn. I guess they have. 25:34 Wes: They have offspring as well. 25:37 Erin: Right. 25:37 Wes: Anyway, little Medea blood in the Athenian line. 25:42 Erin: Yeah. So she does what's best for the kids before she does the opposite of that. But the effect is the same for her. I mean, it's not literally the same because in one instance they live. She just doesn't see them anymore. In another instance, since they don't live and she just doesn't see them anymore, but the outcome for her is the same. 26:01 Wes: She could have brought them with her, though, right? 26:03 Erin: Well, yeah, but that's what I'm wondering about is, is that something that would be good for them? I mean, not that death is better than that. You know, this is the kind of. The almost comical element of this, but would that even be a good outcome for them? If her whole project is about not becoming humiliated, dragging around these kids and having a sort of visual symbol, more obvious visual symbol of her abandonment by Jason than anything else, would that even be possible for her? In addition to the problems, she. 26:37 Wes: That's her rationale, which is that to let the kids live is not. Will lead to her being laughed at and humiliated. And that even though she doesn't want to lose her children, losing them is better than the alternative, which is humiliation and mockery. 26:55 Erin: That's important to note. But I just wonder what the consequences for single motherhood, you know, wandering single motherhood would be in a kind of. In a more real sense, I don't know. Like, I don't know if what allows her to have a kind of an easy, initially easy acceptance into Athens is the fact that she's starting over. She doesn't have two kids in tow, so she ingratiates herself better with Aegeus. And that's how. I don't know, maybe I'm overthinking or reading this too literally, but I think it partially invites us to do that. Right, so by sort of taking the myth and thinking too hard about it in the first place. 27:32 Wes: Yeah. We seem to be encouraged to think of them as ordinary people in a way. Ordinary faults. I mean, the gods are known to have all their Faults, but this really naturalizes them to an incredible degree and psychologizes them, gives them psychological depth. So, yeah, so she comes, she convinces Jason to, you know, first he resists, he doesn't think it'll work, to try and convince Creon to waive the punishment. And then she suggests going through Creon's daughter, Jason's wife, to be. And he's like, oh yeah, I expect I'll win her around. All right, point. If she's a woman like all the rest. So in a way, she appeals indirectly to Jason's vanity and the idea that he can persuade this woman. Then she talks about the gifts that she's going to give, which have their source and the sun and Helios. And Jason's like, are you kidding me? That's way too. You can't give away gifts such as these there. And these are already rich people. Why would you give them that? That, you know, this is Jason. This is a kind of send up of Jason's focus on practicality, right. And money and security and all that. 28:41 Erin: And he says, if I count for anything in my wife's eyes, she will prefer me to wealth, I have no doubt. 28:48 Wes: Right. 28:48 Erin: Nothing wrong with his ego as usual. 28:50 Wes: And then Medea's argument is that the gifts would, quote, win over the gods themselves. And gold is worth more than words to mortals, which I guess does the trick. So this is her way, of course. These are going to be the poisoned. These gifts are going to be poisoned. These are the gifts that are going to do the killing. So it's very important for her to convince Jason to allow the children to take those gifts to the Creon family. It's an interesting sort of argument that these very precious things are going to be more persuasive than words. And I think it's important because the gifts also play upon vanity. Right. Ultimately, Creusa is gonna stand in front of the mirror and look, oh, look how pretty this gown is. And crown. And the way to get to people, in other words, is not by appealing to their sense of pity or charity or fairness or justice, but to appeal to their vanity. That's the thing that Medea seems to know works best. 29:58 Erin: Yeah, I like that a lot. That's a funny metaphor there for sort of getting on the gold standard. Like you gotta, gotta back things up with things people can understand, which are, you know, physical things and their own vanity, you know, you've got to back things up. Is kind of murder of the kids as well. Comes out, comes out of that. I'm thinking Too, about the fact that these things are poisoned. I mean, I want to have a better reading of this than I do. I don't have one yet, but I'm just thinking about the two different methods of murder also kind of make me feel as though Medea really encompasses all things, both ends of the spectrum. Because, you know, I've been reading quite a bit lately about Catherine de Medici, and I was just in Scotland and I got on a little bit of a, you know, Mary Queen of Scots kick and thinking about her relationship with Catherine de Medici and about a lot of how much of the reputation that Catherine de Medici had was the result of French xenophobia against Italians. And this was the origin of a lot of these stories of her being the serpent queen, the poisoner, you know, responsible for the atrocities at the massacre of the Protestant at the wedding. I can't remember the name of the incident, but Very famous incident that I should remember the name of. But anyway, this idea of poison and treacherous femininity, of course, very closely aligned. Like you kill someone sort of from afar via an intermediary agent. And Medea does that, and then she actually just stabs the kids. Right. So she commits a sort of a female murder and then a male murder. 31:35 Wes: She actually says earlier on, if I don't have a plan of escape, then I'm going to do a direct. I'm going to do a murder. So do something with a knife and then it doesn't matter what happens to me. 31:46 Erin: Right. 31:46 Wes: But if I can get away, then I'm going to use the poison route. So she entertains going the more direct route, but if she goes the direct route, then I think she seems to think, well, that's the suicidal route as well. 31:58 Erin: Yeah. And just thinking about the difference between these two types of murders, what we're talking about with Gold as being something sort of literalized, it bears the agent of death, the poison agent, in the form of a kind of symbol. Therefore, it literalizes certain elements of Creusa and arguably Jason's personality, their vanity, et cetera. But it does so via an object and a kind of symbology. Whereas the murder of the kid is just direct. There's no, you know, there's no transport, there's no. There's no symbolic meaning behind that. And I just wonder about, you know, obviously one. One is culturally coded as feminine, one is more masculine. But I just. I kind of wonder about the way that the poison uses Creusa's vanity against her in this really clever way, in this literalizing way. 32:54 Wes: Well, I'm not sure if this is what you're getting at, but perhaps there's an element of poetic justice in that, right? The poisonous thing becomes vanity and pride. And it's. Even though Medea is. Is the one in the play with the great excess of pride and the sense that she's going to do so many violent things on because of it. Pride, right. It's one of the parts of the human soul, as I've said, and it's. You can see it at work in everyone else's motivations, including Jason's motivations. And of course, it's the thing that's often at work in tragic downfall, hubris and pride. Although in Euripides it looks a bit more ordinary. That's why I use the word vanity. So, yeah, with Creusa reminds one of the tale of Narcissus, where he's so in love with himself and his image in the still pool of water that he neglects his real being, his real physical self, his own good, his own true good and perishes. The lesson, right, for the narcissist is one can get wrapped up in image and status so much in this fantasy world of status that you neglect your own what is truly good for you and suffer greatly because of that. And people do that on all the time. It's very, very ordinary, which I think is one of the interesting things. So if that's right, we don't need big, fancy tragic situations to understand how. Right. In other words, the problem of downfall from pride is not just this thing writ large with these big characters. It's just such an ordinary part of the human condition and human psychology. And with Euripides, it seems as if we get that ordinary psychology is more present here, maybe, than in the other Greek playwrights. I can't stand behind that. I would need to know more. But that seems to be what he's known for. So I don't know if that's what you're trying to get at with what it means that she would be poisoned by her own. By looking in the mirror, having something to wear while she looks in the mirror. 35:01 Erin: Yeah, I like the poetic justice part of it that you called attention to. And I guess what I'm interested in is the fact that that though the appeal of poison is the distancing effect it provides by having this intermediary agent so you don't have to be present to kill someone with poison, yet in this instance, it is somehow revelatory. It reveals. And what it reveals is actually something rotten about Creusa's character. So it almost has a double effect. And it is therefore, I think, almost kind of having it both ways. The poison is having it both ways. It's not done in secrecy. It does occur off stage. But we actually. We get an extremely graphic description, which is one of my favorite descriptions in ancient Greek literature because it's just so disgusting and awesome, you know, and this is set up in contrast with the murder of the kids, which is immediate. Right. In a way that. Still off stage in a way that the poisonous not. And yet it happens off stage. Yeah. And you don't. And for very obvious reasons relating to, you know, it would be horrible. Of course, you can't have that on stage. And it's really not spoken of in any. You know, it's Creusa that gets the big. The big cinematic description. Of course, you can barely even talk about what Medea does. Nevermind depicted on stage. And there's a kind of interesting twist. Twist there. The poison ends up being revelatory. The thing that's immediate ends up happening behind closed doors and is very kind of hushed and unspoken in a way that's almost more suggestive of poison than the poisoned jewelry, an outfit or whatever. Yeah. So I like that Even. Even in that kind of binary, they're a bit twisted, I think, is what I was. What I was trying to get at before. 36:48 Wes: So that'll end part. Part five of our series and part six. We're gonna have to get busy because we still got to kill the kids and we gotta taunt Jason, then pull out. Pull out on the Chariot rip. You know, with our. 37:05 Erin: With our fake passports and our wigs. 37:07 Wes: Yeah. And the dead kids hanging over the side. That's. That's the way it's often depicted. 37:13 Erin: Yeah, I know, I know. 37:14 Wes: I sent you those. Well, I sent you a video about. Yeah. The depiction of this in ancient. 37:19 Erin: No, you didn't. 37:20 Wes: Greek art. 37:22 Erin: Oh, you did. You did. You did. You did. I never watched it. 37:25 Wes: Yeah, so in some of the depictions. Yeah. The kids are just hanging over the side of the chair. 37:32 Erin: In the stage version I saw, which had had a kind of a modern setting, their dead bodies were in sleeping bags, bloody sleeping bags. It was really. She carries that over her shoulders. 37:44 Wes: Okay, so we'll do that in part six. 37:46 Erin: Sounds fun. 37:47 Wes: Yeah. The whole play is bare lives. All right, thank you. 37:51 Erin: 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.