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Audience Uncertainty and ' Author(s): Stuart Lawrence Source: Hermes, 125. Bd., H. 1 (1997), pp. 49-55 Published by: Franz Steiner Verlag Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4477177 . Accessed: 08/10/2014 10:02

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This content downloaded from 72.20.138.2 on Wed, 8 Oct 2014 10:02:41 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions AUDIENCE UNCERTAINTY AND EURIPIDES' MEDEA

In the words of Charles SEGALwriting on the 'Bacchae', Euripides' "' feeling for the tragic antinomies of life"...finds its clearest expression in doubling, the pairing of opposites, and the sliding of opposites into one another'.' Ambiguity and unresolved contradictionare typical of this tragedian. In the 'Bacchae' for example the god Dionysus embodies various polarities: male and female, Greek and foreign, rational and non-rational,agent and victim, god and beast, god and human being. In some sense, literal or figurative, all of these oppositions apply also to 'Medea', and the play is disturbing because the protagonist arouses conflicting responses2.Indeed, Euripides fosters ambivalenceand ambiguitypart- ly through the play's tadvotx and partly at the emotional level by eliciting at different times sympathy or alienation. The spectators (and especially the men) are compelled thereby to view, however reluctantly, Medea's psychology as relevant to their own, although after the they may feel the impulse to dismiss her as totally alien, as a highly emotional and irrationalbarbarian sorcer- ess who could have nothing in common with a sensible and decent Greek male. Ambivalence and ambiguityare at once to the fore in the prologos where, if the audience entered the theatre expecting to see Medea the exotic criminal, they received essentially (though not entirely) the opposite impression3.The nurse, the tutor and the chorus of Corinthianwomen are all well-disposed towards Medea and severely critical of Jason4. We are informed of her services to him at

1 C. SEGAL,Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides' 'Bacchae', Princeton 1982, 25. SEGALhere quotes F. WASSERMANN,Man and God in 'Bacchae' and ' at Colonus', in: Studies presented to David M. Robinson, ed. C. Mylonas and D. Raymond 2, St Louis 1953, 563. 2 'The 'Medea's' harsh effect on the audience is further intensified by the fact that the reactions demanded from them at various points are so turbulently contradictory. Euripides did not simply show his audience complexities; he made them feel them in the confused tumble of their emotional responses to the characters and their actions' (E. A. McDERMOTI, Euripides' Medea. The Incarnation of Disorder, Penn State UP 1989, her emphasis 78). G. H. GELLIE, The Character of Medea, Bull.Inst. Class.Stud. 35, 1988, 19, sees Medea as 'a conglomerate of qualities shaped by various influences into a creature who can fill a stage or a story but was never seen walking down a street.' 3 D. L. PAGE,Euripides. Medea, Oxford 1938, xviii-xxi, thought that Euripides' audience would respond to Medea the foreigner in terms of certain stereotypes. The view has found little favour, but the poet may have counted on the existence of such prejudices and then set about overturning them. E. HALL, Inventing the Barbarian, Oxford 1989, 17, 35 n. 110, suggests that it may have been Euripides who transformed Medea into a barbarian. 4 E.g. 49ff., 82-88, 173ff.

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considerablecost to herself, of her subsequentloyal submissiveness as his wife, of her acceptance by the Corinthiansand of 's intention to banish her from Corinth. We hear too her heartbrokencries from within the house5. In counter- point to all of this, however, we are reminded that in helping Medea was prepared to go to barbarouslengths, that she is a dangerous and formidable adversary, that she hates her own children, that she may strike down friends indiscriminately with foes and that she is impervious to advice or influence6. These antitheticalideas and feelings merge or alternate.The affair is cited as a service to Jason, but it is also an instance of Medea's ruthless criminality. Medea's sufferings move us to pity but also alienate us by their almost inhuman excess (she is likened to inanimatenature at 28-29) - and there is the threatto the children7. The technique of Medea's great addressto the chorus (214ff.) is similar. The audience would sympathise with Medea the victim of an extreme situation to the point perhaps of wanting revenge for her sake, but the retaliation intimated is clearly a murder (iaucpovoycpa, 266) of which the audience could not have morally approved.It will not do here to appealto the dictum 'harmyour enemies' because, firstly, the audience's sympathy is too equivocal to count as identifica- tion with Medea, and, secondly, what is in prospectis the killing of a husbandand that for a crime considerably less than Agamemnon's in where the chorus, despite their condemnation of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, are utterly appalled by his wife's deed8. Medea's argumentin this speech creates a furtherunease. In describing the social disabilities of women so readily recognisable to an audience she provides

S E.g. 9-15, 31-35, 70-72, 96-98, 143-47. B. GREDLEY,The Place andTime of Victory: Euripides' 'Medea', Bull.Inst.Class.Stud.34, 1987, 27-29, remarkson the importanceof the crvij, or the areabehind it, as the locus of Medea'salienation, from which her emotionsspill out on the stage. 6 E.g. 9, 28f., 36-45. 7 'Medeaherself is presentedin all the alarmingviolence of herpassion, but framed by the sympathyof the Nurseand chorus, and therefore to be seen by the audienceas a victim,even if also as a potentialcriminal'. P. E. EASTERLING,The Infanticidein Euripides' 'Medea', Yale Class.Stud.25, 1977, 181.D. J. CONACHER,Euripidean Drama, Toronto 1967, 187,observes: 'The seriesof emotionstraversed - sympathy,apprehension, horror - anticipatesin a few rapidstrokes the responseswhich, in the same sequence,the comingaction will evoke'. Euripides'use of the mythic sourcesand the questionof the originalityof the deliberate infanticideis discussedby PAGE(n. 3) xxiff. Thequestion of thepriority of Neophron'splay is the subjectof a studyby A. N. MICHELINI,Neophron and Euripides, Medea 1065-80, T.A.Ph.A.119 (1989), 115-35. W. STEIDLE,Studien zum antikenDrama, Munich 1968, 154 n. 16, finds the referencesto Medea's hatredof the childrenfully intelligibleto an audienceonly if they were awareof a priortradition of deliberateinfanticide, whereas T. V. BUTTREY,Accident and Design in Euripides''Medea', AJ.Ph. 79 (1958), 12-14 discussespossible audiencereactions to refe- rencesto the childrenprecisely on the oppositeassumption. 8 Ag. 1399ff.

This content downloaded from 72.20.138.2 on Wed, 8 Oct 2014 10:02:41 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions AudienceUncertainty and Euripides'Medea 51 one context at any rate for explaining her later deeds, at least when she appends the exacerbatingfactor of her statusas an . There is no attempthere to define her situation by ethnicity or individual temperament,i.e. that she is a barbarian and naturallypassionate,and therefore more likely to kill. If an audience goes with Medea on this, they may well have to think that a Greek woman in this extreme situation might have been capable of similarbloody deeds9.There is no invitation to dismiss Medea as alien to the spectator'spsychology or culture. If an audience experiences a blend of amoral admirationand moral unease at Medea's Odyssean manipulationof Creon and exploitation of his sensitivity to a supplication10,a higher intensityof emotional ambivalenceand conceptualuncer- tainty arises out of Medea's reactions after that scene. In this monologue, which falls into two parts, Medea begins by relishing the fulfilment of her vindictive schemes now spelt out fully for the first time (364-85), at which point it is at least doubtful that the audience are actively supportingMedea ratherthan standing in awe of her singleminded audacity.If they are respondingmorally at all they will condemn a revenge that cuts down the innocent with the guilty. In any event Medea is not here explicable as the representativeGreek or Athenianwoman, and the reference to her skill in drugs (384-85) recalls the tradition of Medea the sorceress11.On the other hand, her determinationto silence the laughter of her enemies puts her in the company of the male heroes of Greek legend and morally on the same groundin principle as such decent men as Plato's Polemarchus12.

9 Euripidesmakes his audienceaware that 'pressuresanalogous to those workingupon Medeaexist in theirown comfortablehomes'. K. J. RECKFORD,Medea's First Exit, T.A.Ph.A.99 (1968), 339. 'Medeais a barbarianwith incalculablepower; she is also an archetypalMarried Wife, and as such an isolated foreigner.This second aspect of Medea, together with the relentlesslyrecognizable portrait of a womanwronged, is designedto preventevery man in the audiencefrom comfortably dissociating her from his own Greekspouse'. M. VISSER,Medea: Daughter,Sister, Wife andMother, in: GreekTragedy and its Legacy(ed. CROPP.et al.), Calgary 1986, 152. H. ROHDICH,Die EuripideischeTragodie, Heidelberg 1968, 47f., sees Medea as a 'normal'woman different from the chorusonly in the extremityof her circumstances. 10 R. G. A. BUXrON,Persuasion in Greek ,Cambridge 1982, 35, commends Creon'ssense of ai&& here.For a dissenting view see D. KoVACS, in Euripides' 'Medea', A.J.Ph.114 (1993) 56. 11 B. M. W. KNox,The 'Medea'of Euripides,Yale Class.Stud.25 (1977) 211-16, denies that Medea is any more a sorceress than Creusa or Deianeira who have recourse to drugs with supernaturalassociations or ingredients. But Medea is a professional: S. P. MILLS,The Sorrows of Medea, Cl.Phil. 75 (1980) 291-93, cites 'the magical aid Medea gave Jason in his Colchian adventures... (476-82)', the murderof Pelias, 'alluded to frequently (9-10, 486-87, 504-5, 734), ...Medea's origin as not merely a foreigner but as someone who entered Greece from outside the whole known world... (1-2,.. .210-12, 431-33, 1262-64)', and Medea's offer to cure ' childlessness. See also CONACHER(n. 7) 186, M. P. CUNNINGHAM,Medea &no'gqXcavfj;, CI.Phil. 49 (1954) 153. 12 Republic332b. When 'Euripidesgives the barbarianwitch the ideals of a traditional

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In the second part of the monologue (386-409) Medea the victim briefly reappears(386-89), but before sympathy has developed any momentum Medea the sorceress re-emerges with Medea the desperateand determined 'Sophoclean' hero13(391ff.), the woman who forms her self-view on the basis of her highly distinguished ancestry (406). So by the time the speech ends with a sarcastic reference to a stereotypeabout evil, scheming women that seem to offer an escape hatch to those who would dissociate themselves from Medea (407-9), it is at least clear that nothing is as clear as such stereotypeswould suggest. In a short ode (410-45) the chorus claim that Jason's treatmentof Medea has discreditedthe traditionalprejudice about female deceitfulness, makingthe barba- rian woman the positive pole of an antithesisthat has Greek males at its other end (410-30, 439-40). But the audience can reflect that Medea herself has just shown herself to be the arch-deceiver.The play will offer no evidence at all for (or indeed against) the culturalsuperiority of non-Greeks.None of Medea's behaviourup to this point has been explained as the product of an alien society14. The nurse attributedher excesses to her royal upbringing(1 19-21)15, and even Creon, while expressing fear of her ao(pia in drugs, made no mention of any suspect foreign vOgoI (282-91). The first two scenes with Jason explore in a problematicalway the relation of reason to emotion. In his criticism of what he clearly considers Medea's stupid emotionalism (446-58) Jason casts himself in the role of a cool, sensible man who plans intelligently for the future (459-63, 547-73). But the spectator cannot accept this implied antithesis. Medea is certainlyemotional, and her threatswere stupid, but she is now concealing her feelings in the interestsof a carefully plotted revenge. People sometimes assume, as Jason does here, that strong emotions are antithetical to and incompatible with rational planning. But the spectatorknows from what he has seen of Medea how simplistic this is. The scene of false reconciliation will confirm it and the GreatMonologue show just how reason and emotion are tragically related in Medea. Jason, who to his own misfortune does not realise it, himself appearsimmune to strong feelings, the good as well as the bad. But not only is Jason unemotional;he is unheroic. We see this when Medea reinterpretshis exploits as her own (476-87). Again we are debarredfrom taking refuge in stereotypes. It is worth noting too that Jason's male Greek fame is based on the achievements of a barbarianfemale16.

Greek hero he is surely suggesting that there is no safe dividing line; civilized life is always most precariously poised, continually threatened from within' - EASTERLING(n. 7) 191. 13 KNox (n. 11) 196-206. 14 'If Medea is to be seen as a distinctively oriental type.. why does Euripides make her talk like a Greek, argue like a Greek, and to all appearances feel like a Greek? - EASTERLING(n. 7) 180, her emphasis. See also KNox (n. 11) 217. 15 For Medea as virtually a tyrannus see PAGE(n. 3) ad 119-30 and K. VONFRIrz, Antike und moderne Tragodie, Berlin 1962, 357. 16 On Medea's contribution and Jason's status as a flawed hero see VONFRITZ (n. 15) 33 If.,

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In the brief ode that follows the scene of spurious reconciliation (976-1001) the chorus divide their sympathy among all the parties, and all are viewed as victims. Medea herself is now two people: Medea the agent and Medea the victim of Medea the agent. Now that she has effectively removed all her opposition, only Medea can oppose her own resolve17.If, with KoVACS18,we accept that the entire Great Monologue is genuine (apart from 1056-64), we encounter in the final couplet a Medea who dissociates herself emotionally from her irresistibleihjgo6; (as the source of her terrible sufferings)19.Those of us who consider the lines authenticcan look upon Medea at this point as the woman and mother disowning an alien entity. (Otherwiseshe is to be identifiedwith the ftugo6;,and the maternal feelings will be secondary20.)Medea, once all focussed t3Rugo6,is at this point also a mother and a detached critical awareness. Yet this awareness knows that its rationalitywill soon be harnessedto the terrifyingirrationality of the itg6o;21. The ugly murdersof Creon and the princess and the perpetrator'sresponse to them (1133-35) could hardly fail to revolt the Greek audience, as they do the messenger, for Medea is not torn on this issue as she was about the infanticide, to which she now turns,resigned to its necessity (whetheras the perfect revenge or to forestall the children'smurder by the Corinthians:1236-41). She is not dehuma- nised yet but aware of the lasting sorrowtheir loss will bring (1247-50), and even ex machina she admits that she suffers, although at this point she claims that it is worthwhile. (Contrast1362 with 1046f.) The resolution ex machina has arousedendless controversy,largely because it seems to belong to a different level of the dramaticillusion, with supernatural elements negating the earlier realism. But there is no absolute break between the scene and what precedes it, for Medea needs transportfrom Corinth (Aegeus

356; S. A. BARLOW,Stereotype and Reversal in Euripides''Medea', Greece and Rome 36 (1989) 162; A. P. BURNETr, Medeaand the Tragedyof Revenge,CI.Phil. 68 (1973) 16; D. BOEDEKER, Euripides''Medea' and the Vanityof logoi, Cl.Phil.86 (1991) 104-6. 17 KNox(n. 11) 200f., CONACHER(n. 7) 195. 18 D. KoVACS,On Medea'sGreat Monologue, Cl.Qu. 36 (1986) 343-52. For referencesto recentdebate see GREDLEY(n. 5) 36, n. 4. 19 G. R. STANTON,The End of Medea'sMonologue: Euripides' 'Medea' 1078-80, Rh.M. 130 (1987) 97-106. 20 See E. SCHLESINGER,On Euripides''Medea', in: Euripides,ed. E. SEGAL, New Jersey 1986, 72. 21 H. D. F. Kirro, GreekTragedy, London 1961, 195, finds Medea's strugglewith her maternalfeelings 'theatrical'rather than 'psychologically convincing' in line withhis view of her as a monolithicembodiment of i5it6;. EASTERLING(n. 7), 188, is morejudicious: 'The detail of the speechsuggests that despite a certainrhetorical formalism of mannerEuripides keeps close to observed patternsof humanbehaviour.' Medea's disdain for and manipulationof feminine stereotypesfail in the case of the maternalinstinct which is morethan a stereotype(BARLOW [n. 16] 164f.); 'the Medeawho expressedearlier such contemptfor the traditionalviews of women cannotafter all escapeher natureas one'.

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offered only sanctuary at 725-30), and the logic of a fully triumphantrevenge requiresa furtherconfrontation with Jason duringwhich she must remain inviola- ble22. Doubtless these requirementscould have been met without recourse to a supernaturaldevice23, but the dragonchariot has obvious theatricaland figurative advantages. With respect to theatrical considerations, Euripides has kept his audience guessing about Medea's mode of escape; he now satisfies their curiosity in spectacularfashion24. On the figurativeplane Medea can appearan implacable deity, an embodimentof her own vengeful i5Thg6.This is manifest in so far as she is revealed as a Euripideandeus25. But that the break between the Medea of the epilogue and the earlier woman is not absolute is evident from her words: she gloats before Jason (which is what the earlier Medea always wanted), while she admits that she suffers (1362), as she admittedearlier (1247-50). So while some of her pronouncementsare appropriateto a deus but not to a mortal (her prophecy at 1386-88 in particular),others are equally characteristicboth of a Euripidean deus and of Medea the woman26.In this respect this pseudo-deus contrasts with, for example, the epilogue of the '' which in its reversion to myth is completely dissonant with the realistic dramathat precedes it. Here the realistic Medea spills over into the epilogue, and the relevance is preserved (and indeed enhanced) by the figurative dimension of the scene. Critics who have been impressedonly by the gulf between the epilogue and the earlier scenes have tended to claim thatthe real Medea, the woman, is now dead or dehumanised,sometimes withoutclarifying whetherthis dehumanisationis literal or merely figurative27.CUNNNINGHAM, however, rightly insists that the apotheosis is merely figurative, for Medea is en route to and Aegeus, ratherthan to Olympus28. Indeed she is invested with characteristicallyEuripidean ambiva- lence: she remains a woman but she is also a sort of &Xdat&p. The &XiJLovis perhapsonly within29.So in this sense a mortalmay incorporatean immortal.But

22 SCHLESINGER (n. 20) 75-77, EASTERLING(n. 7) 190, W. SALE,Existentialism and Euripi- des, Melbourne 1977, 32. 23 SALE(n. 22) 32, suggests 'a pre-arrangedescort from Aegeus'. 24 See N. E. COLLINGE,Medea ex machina, Cl.Phil. 57 (1962) 170-72. For this reason, if for no other, Medea must betray (or simply possess) no foreknowledge of the chariot. 25 See especially KNox (n. 11) 206-10, and CUNNINGHAM (n. 11) passim. 26 On Medea's humanity ex machina see BUXTON (n. 10) 169; C. E. COWHERD, The Ending of the 'Medea', Cl.World. 76 (1983) 135; EASTERLING (n. 7) 191; STEIDLE (n. 7) 168. 27 E. g. BURNErT (n. 16) 22, KNox (n. 11) 206-9, E. B. BONGIE, Heroic Elements in the 'Medea' of Euripides, T.A.Ph.A. 107 (1977) 55, RECKFORD (n. 9) 333f., 359; LUCAS,The Greek Tragic Poets, 3rd ed., London 1959, A. LESKY, , tr. FRANKFORT, London 1965, 197; PAGE (n. 3) xiv; MILLS (n. 11) 296; BARLOW (n. 16) 167. 28 CUNNINGHAM (n. 11) 159. 29 As tells at 'Troades' 988, 'Your mind was turned into Cypris'.

This content downloaded from 72.20.138.2 on Wed, 8 Oct 2014 10:02:41 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions AudienceUncertainty and Euripides'Medea 55 there is also traditionallya gulf between mortals and gods which it is i,S"pt;to attemptto bridge. Euripideshere underminesthat holiest of polarised distinctions by actually reifying in a visual metaphorthe idea that a mortal may be 'demon- ic'30. Medea is also a monstrousbeast, for (one might wish to believe) only a beast could kill her own children (1342f., 1358f.), and yet the gods condone by their silence or actually assist - as does in his inscrutableway3l. This is implied in the chorus' appeal to preventthe infanticide(1251-60) and in Jason's disbelief that Medea could do the deed while looking at the sun (1327f.). Why should a polluted Helios signal his gratitudewith the gift of a winged chariot?Morally, is there anythingto choose between the superhumanand the subhuman?If Medea is a beast or a god, it is because of her iv,io ;, and thoughthis 15vgo6;is excessive, it is still in principle human, and not aberrantlyhuman but dressed in respectability by the heroic code which converts its non-rational impulses into a hallowed vogo;, a principleof justice. It follows thatthe audiencecannot dismiss Medea as uncivilised or inhuman or un-Greek, insofar as her motivation is legitimised by the code. Jason claims that no Greek woman would have done it (1339f.), but the play does not show the infanticide to be the product of Colchian customs, whatever they might have been. There remains Medea's sorcery. That she habitually employs drugs with Hecate's help is undeniable. But a witch is still a woman, and the supernatural dimension applies only to the means by which she dispatches her victims. It does not contaminate her motives which originate in the 15vRO6.It does, however, affect the success of her revenge, guaranteeingher invulnerabilityagainst Jason. In conclusion, Euripidesinvites questioningof rigid categorisations,stereoty- pes and antitheses. During the course of the play the spectatorwill have come to sympathise with and understanda foreign witch by seeing that she is not entirely unlike Athenian wives, and even in some degree resembles Athenian men in her moral outlook32.But he will also have experienced an uneasy sense of alienation from Medea and thereforefrom his own human natureand Greek culture and he will have come to see that his vaunted rationality, far from being an effective weapon against this evil, may turn out, perfidiously, to be its formidable accom- plice. Massey University, New Zealand StuartLawrence

30 Aeschylus' Clytemnestraclaims to be an iaBoato(op, denying her identity as Agamemnon'shuman wife, but the chorusinsist on the dual operationof the woman and the assistingavenger (Ag. 1498-1508).The visual metaphor of Medeain the chariot,playing the role of deus, suggeststhat she is herselfthe avengingspirit. 31 See Krrro(n. 21) 201, KNox(n. 11) 204-5. 32 ContrastBARLOW (n. 16) 158, who believes thatthe fact thatMedea is a foreignerand a sorceressare 'theauthor's get-outs - loop-holesin case the actionturns out to be too controversial for the audienceto stomach'.

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