Medea: founder member of the first wives’ club

Abstract

This reading of Euripides’ tragedy of Medea restores meanings that the Christian tradition, with its contempt for the body, has obscured. It draws a distinction between the myth, its fantasies based on fear of a woman with intelligence, and the work of the playwright. Using the language of theatre, Euripides analyses the contradictory emotional logic that takes over a woman at risk as an abandoned mother. Calling attention to Euripides’ staging of physical tenderness, a love that grows with intimacy in his account, it argues that action and language work together to challenge the myth of the hero.