Discussion Topic

Medea as a Tragic Heroine

Summary:

Medea's role as a tragic heroine in Euripides' play is complex. While she exhibits traits of a tragic hero, such as a noble status and a tragic flaw—her intense passion—her actions and lack of self-awareness complicate this categorization. Unlike typical tragic heroes, Medea orchestrates her own downfall through calculated revenge, including the murder of her children, without achieving self-awareness or audience sympathy. Her story diverges from Aristotle's tragic hero model, making her a controversial figure in literature.

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Is Medea a tragic hero?

Medea is a tragic hero. She is generally considered to fit in this category because she embodies the primary characteristics of such a hero. Medea has valid motives for her actions but is brought down by events beyond her control. In addition, she has a tragic flaw that she cannot overcome. The combination of fate and this character flaw make it so that the situation she sought to remedy ends badly.

In this story, the situation she cannot control is caused by her husband’s sexual desire, which leads to his infidelity. Medea had helped Jason when he desperately needed help, but he has not repaid her loyalty. Because of his betrayal with another woman and his abandonment of their children, Medea feels jealous, desperate, and forsaken. Furthermore, his new wife’s father, a powerful king, banishes her and the children. These combined circumstances not only spur her desire for revenge but make her unbearably distraught. Losing her ability to rationally resolve the problem, she resorts to poisoning and murder. While the death of her replacement in Jason's affection might be understandable, her killing of her children is a truly tragic outcome.

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Discuss Medea's role as a tragic heroine in Euripides' Medea.

What makes answering the question of what makes the eponymous protagonist of Euripides' play Medea a tragic heroine somewhat complicated is that the term "heroine" is being applied anachronistically. When we think of the term "heroine" in popular context in the twenty-first century, we are actually fusing together two different concepts, one having to do with the centrality of the character in the plot and the other having to do with a sense of not only greatness in the sense of importance but moral goodness. In Greek tragedy, these two concepts were not actually linked together. The term hero was used for a race of people who were quasi-divine (Hercules is an example), but this term is not the same as tragic protagonist.

According to the important Greek philosopher Aristotle:

Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, ... Again, Tragedy is the imitation of an action; and an action implies personal agents, who necessarily possess certain distinctive qualities both of character and thought; ...

The leading character in a play was called the "protagonist" (literally meaning "main contestant"). The protagonist was the most important character in the play, and according to Aristotle was expected to suffer reversals, and have experiences that invoked fear and pity in the audience. For this, the character needed to have a certain grandeur, a sense of being larger than life or out of the ordinary, but not necessarily morally good or a role model. 

Medea is therefore a strong protagonist, with a certain greatness, strong willed, possessed of magical powers, and part of great historic events. She was also considered by Greek readers to be, like several other important female tragic or epic protagonists (e.g. Helen, Clytemnestra), evil. Thus we can say that she indeed fits the ideal of the tragic protagonist, but not twenty-first century conceptions of a "heroine."

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To what extent is Medea a tragic hero, following Aristotle's definition in Poetics?

In Aristotle's Poetics, a tragic hero is defined as a person of high rank who is brought low by a tragic flaw. The tragic hero's own actions are the catalyst for their ultimate fate, and this fate is usually more extreme than the character deserves. In the text, Aristotle describes this type of hero as such:

...a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous—a personage like Oedipus, Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such families.

Medea fits this description to a certain degree, though not perfectly. She is of high rank, being born a princess. She values justice, at least for herself. Her tragic flaw is her passion, which causes her to murder her own children and Jason's new bride-to-be in order to revenge herself upon Jason when he abandons her.

Unlike most tragic heroes Aristotle describes, Medea does not die at the end of her story. Instead, she buries her children and spends the rest of her life in Athens as a bitter woman. Her own passion has destroyed any chance of happiness in her future, which is tragic indeed.

Despite all of this, in most ways, Medea does not fit Aristotle's description: tragic heroes are supposed to gain self-awareness at the end of their stories. For example, Oedipus learns the truth about his past at the end of Oedipus Rex. His life is changed forever by this new awareness. Medea never gains such self-awareness. She feels entirely justified in murdering her two children, while a more traditional tragic hero would learn to recoil from this act in horror and live to regret it.

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