bloodier spirit between heaven and hell."

Of course, her actions against Jason's new bride and her own children are bloody and horrifying. If it is Jason that is responsible for his betrayal, Medea's response is emotional, driven by her passions. Even if the play is somewhat sympathetic in its depiction of the title character, it is also based on contemporary beliefs about the nature of women, who were often seen as irrational and motivated by emotion alone. So Medea is blatant in its depiction of women as oppressed, and it presents audiences with a woman who resists oppression. But it does not really subvert contemporary assumptions about gender.

What is fascinating about this play is the way in which Medea does not passively sit back and accept the injustice of what has been happening to her. Whilst of course we could argue against the extent of the revenge that she takes, she is definitely not presented as a weak female figure that is silent in the face of patriarchal injustice. Her desire to gain revenge and get even gives power to women and is an example of how women can operate to assert themselves in the face of patriarchal oppression.

Medea is very much advocating equality for women.  The central conflict of the play is the fact that Jason can just up and leave their marriage for something better, but that she is has no stand in the case.  She makes it very clear that there is not true "cause" on Jason's part except his own selfishness. She explicitly recounts all she has done for Jason.  The fact that Medea is a foreigner in Corinth complicates matters for her because she understands that the new wife (princess of Corinth) isn't going to tolerate her presence and she is left with no where to turn. Jason tries to justify his behavior which is what ultimately sends her over the edge and drives her to take just drastic revenge on him.

In a rudimentary form, the play represents an early form of feminism in a couple of ways.  I think that the first way is that Medea actually is an active agent of her world.  Contrary to the typical Greek depiction of women who are designed to tend to the hearth and are actually more victimized by men than anything else, Medea is not this.  She demands justice or vengeance, depending on one's perspective, from Jason.  She does not find herself having to subjugate her voice to a man's and in this, one sees some early strains of feminist thought.  Additionally, Medea's characterization represents an early form of feminism in that Medea sees herself as woman first. Her designation as a wife or mother are secondary to her own feelings as a woman.  In this, one sees Medea appropriate an identity that is strongly linked to the feminist thought that suggests that women see themselves as women in the most primary of senses as opposed to seeing themselves in socially constructed roles with socially constructed responsibilities.  Medea does not do this.  Finally, I think that the play shows an equality between the genders.  Simply put, Medea is as rotten of a character as Jason.  While her actions might be explained or rationalized, the killing of children is abhorrent, almost as bad as Jason's using of Medea for his own personal gain and then discarding of her.  Whether it was Sophocles' intention to do so, his rendering of Medea is a feminist reading in that he shows that both genders are equally capable of cruel savagery.  One gender does not corner the market on that score, as both Jason and Medea are equally cruel human beings.

It is feminist in the sense that it gives power to a woman.  Medea takes revenge when she is spurned.  She does not just sit back and wail, she takes action.  However, it can also be viewed as a woman being fickle and unable to accept that she'd been jilted, which is a weakness.

In Euripides Medea, women have only limited freedom of action, reflecting the actual situation of Athenian society at the time when it was written. The female character who appears to be most powerful and act most freely is Medea, who is not a Greek but a barbarian princess and a sorcerer. She does not act independently, though, for her motives in killing her brother and tricking Pelias`daughters into killing their father were purely out of love for Jason. Her final revenge on Jason and killing of her own children are in response to his taking another wife.

She does not at any time wield political or civic power and acts entirely from personal motives. For the Greeks, in which male power (and ethics) were situated in the interactions of the polis, this was a grotesque and evil amplification of the female role, which was limited to action within the household. Despite Medea`s dramatic actions, like actual Greek, her sphere of activity is limited to the household (she only affects people related to her) and she has no actual power over anyone outside the household.

I think that Medea is able to redress the inequality between the sexes through assertion of her own voice through her own actions.  She does not take a passive point of view in her predicament.  She actively understands what Jason did and how it impacted her.  She designs and deliberates over what an appropriate punishment needs to be.  She is a character that believes that she can equalize out the playing field.  The wrong that has been done to her is something that she sees must be reciprocated in equal and in kind.  The desire to take away Jason's children is something that is seen as equal in force to what was done to Medea.  It is here where Medea sees her actions as being able to equalize out what happened between both sexes.  The fact that the Chorus advocates a less active role in what is being planned and Medea distances herself from this reflects how she sees what she is doing as a way to remedy that which is wrong.  The inequality between both men and women is something that Medea might not actively seek to solve in the society.  Medea does not do what she does as a striking blow to gender inequality.  Yet, she seeks to exact revenge on Jason, who is able to do what he does because he is a man and believes that there are no repercussions for what he does.  In response to this, Medea undertakes her brutal deed, in the process making him feel an analogous level of pain that she endures.  In this, there is an equalizing out of the field of gender in that both genders are shown to experience heartbreak and pain at the hands of unspeakable cruelty.