Medea commits the most heinous crime a mother could.

How does Euripides

elicit any sympathy for her from the audience?

Euripides very cleverly made a raging, calculating murderer into a character who can
be sympathised with and, to some extent, even be respected. By the standards of any
audience, Medea’s actions are cruel and horrific yet they are by no means unprovoked
for Medea is a woman damaged and betrayed by the person she loved and trusted
most. As a persevering, unyielding, intelligent and passionate woman, she is quite
remarkable and earns the sympathy of many of the characters in the play.

In the beginning of the play Medea declares that she “hate[s] living!” because she is
completely “alone” having lost her husband, her status, her love and her happiness.
Her despair and hatred for her husband is not an irrational overreaction for she has
been wronged in many ways. Firstly her husband, whom she loved so dearly that she
killed her own brother, left her own home and bore two sons, decided to leave his
wife and children. Secondly, he decided to break his marriage vows and marry a
younger, wealthier woman; a princess no less. Thus, Medea has been insulted,
betrayed and rejected. Her “passionate indignation” is not just the anger she feels
about this injustice but it is a deep sorrow and despair because of Jason’s clear
disregard for Medea’s love. Living in a culture heavily concerned with justice and
law, an Athenian audience would have felt the gravity of this injustice. Furthermore,
they would have also been able to empathise with the sorrow Medea experiences, just
as a modern audience would.

Being left by her husband is even worse for Medea than it would have been for her
Greek contemporaries. In Corinth, she is a foreigner and an outsider and thus her
status and respectability relies solely on her husband as there is no one else. As she is
said to have “earned her welcome” in Corinth, Medea can be congratulated for
conforming to Corinthian norms. It seems that she has done everything she can to
settle in and be accepted. When Jason leaves her, this effort and status is taken away
from her and she has “no land, no home, no refuge from despair”. To add to her
predicament as a lonely outsider she is also a woman. It is thus almost impossible for
her to support herself on her own. It is not just empathy which the audience are
invited to feel, however, a certain degree of understanding is too. Medea admits that
she is “of a different kind: dangerous to my enemies”. Indeed, her Asian background
would have been seen, by the Greeks, as a logical assumption for barbarity. Her
background and nature have taught her to love and hate with all the strength and
power she has. This explains the rage and insult of Jason’s betrayal as well as the
reasoning behind his severe punishment. If one accepts that this “different kind” has
a more passionate and primitive set of values which rely heavily on natural impulses,
then one can understand that Medea’s crime is one of passion.

It is not enough for an audience to merely be able to understand and empathise with
Medea for it would not excuse her entirely of her crimes. One must also side with
Medea against Jason. He comes across as an uncaring, selfish and conceited liar. For
example, his reasoning for marrying princess Glauce is that he was apparently trying
to secure the well-being of his family. Medea is understandably enraged by this for
this lie is a disrespectful insult to her intelligence as well as their previous life
together. Jason does not stop there however, he continues to insult her by attributing
her actions or even sacrifices for him to Aphrodite, effectively disregarding anything
she has ever done for him. He also clearly believes she is insane and conceitedly
blames her rage on “sex-jealousy”. Euripides made this hero into a character that is
impossible to respect or pity. Perhaps the most enraging thing of all is that Jason says
“blame no one but yourself” in reference to her banishment, thus abandoning any
responsibility so that one is left with few alternatives but to agree with Medea’s claim
that he is an unmanly “filthy coward”.

The audience is also influenced by the views of the chorus and the base characters
such as the nurse and the tutor as they all represent ordinary people who lived in
Corinth. Even though this was not the same city as Athens, they were both in Hellas
and thus held enough similarities for Athenians to be able to identify themselves with.
As these characters were almost always on Medea’s side, so were the audience. She is
frequently called “poor Medea” or a “poor woman” by these characters. Even Creon,
who fears and hates Medea, feels a little pity for her when he calls her a “poor
wretch”. The understanding and compassion the tutor and nurse have for Medea are
vital in making her character more likeable. In fact, she is respected so much by the
chorus, that they agree to “say nothing” of her vengeful plans because they too think it
“will be just”. Admittedly, these characters, especially the nurse, are somewhat
frightened of Medea’s rage and are horrified by her desire to kill her innocent
children. Nevertheless, they seem to offer some understanding (though not
compassion) for these murders by saying “stone and iron you are, as you have
resolved to be”. Though this is by no means a compliment, it suggests that the chorus
understand that Medea has changed in order to properly avenge Jason. They soon
reiterate that she is a woman “full of passion and pain” and while they do not excuse
her entirely for her crimes, they do not make her appear as a force of ‘pure evil’ or
cruelty, rather someone maddened by betrayal and love.

While Medea’s seeming insanity as the result of her being “wild with love” cannot be
respected, her intelligence certainly can. As she is evidently cable of love (for loving
Jason) and is not ‘pure evil’, the only explanation for her crimes is that they were
committed unknowingly. However, this is not true either because she is aware of
everything she has done, and goes so far as to call her brother’s murder as
“shameful”. Thus Medea’s crimes are neither the result of stupidity, nor of a lack of
morality. Instead, they are the result of calculated reasoning. She decides that killing
her brother is the only way to save the man he loves (as well as herself) and is thus
necessary. Similarly, when she kills her children, she sees it as an unfortunate
necessity in order to achieve justice, which was of the greatest importance according
to her values. One must not forget that Medea is not unfeeling for she admits that she
is about to commit “horror” and even contemplates changing her plans. However,
“anger…masters…[her] resolve” to kill them for she is remarkably determined to
avenge herself and punish her husband. Though her sense of justice is quite twisted,
her standards being far different to those of the audience, it is a persevering and strong
sense of justice nevertheless; one which, to some audience members, may have been
(and may still be) a fairly respectable trait.

Euripides ensured that his audience understood the gravity of Medea’s predicament as
a foreigner, as a woman and, most importantly, as someone who gave her all to a
conceited liar who betrayed her. While her intelligence and sense of justice may
rightly be feared, they also give cause to a certain degree of respect. For these reasons,
one can sympathise with her and pity her, without having to approve of her actions.