I recently came across a translation of Euripedes’s Medea by David Kocas. It felt more like an encounter really, like I'd come across Medea herself: an icon in a barren church, a window into God’s abandoned feminine half, a woman burning with grief. Yes, Medea is a political play. Yes, it engages in a conversation around topics strikingly relevant to a modern mind: xenophobia, misogyny, distrust of intellectuals. Yes, even the characters seem reminiscent of modern tropes; a Gen Z-er might call Jason a manipulate, mansplain, manwhore. But at its heart, Euripides’s Medea is the story of a woman, a woman robbed of everything that, in Ancient Greece, constituted her womanhood: her home, her family, her husband. Medea is the story of a woman forced to reckon with the existential grief of having to redefine herself completely. 

Medea sacrificed everything for her husband Jason only to be abandoned by him. Medea is the heroine of a hero’s story, a wife, a kingmaker. But her own story is tragic. Her grief is central. It consumes everything else, even driving her to kill her own children so she can deprive Jason of the opportunity of being cared for by them in his old age. One of the characteristics of a Greek Tragedy is the hero’s fatal flaw, the unstable foundation that allows their empire to collapse. One could argue that Medea’s fatal flaw is her desire for revenge, but in a truer sense, it’s her pride. Like so many women throughout history, she poured everything she had into her husband. She surrendered her sense of self so Jason could succeed, but she is determined to find that sense of self again. The problem is that when Jason deserts her to marry the king's daughter, breaking his oath, all she is left with is a gut full of anger and profound sorrow. Her grief is the only tool she has to reassert herself. We hear her say, quite plainly, after resolving to murder her children. “Let no one think me weak, contemptible, untroublesome. No, quite the opposite, hurtful to foes, to friends kindly. Such persons live a life of greatest glory.” 

Euripedes does not simply do the unthinkable: inspire empathy for a woman who kills her own children, he actually forces empathy onto his audience. For the story to make sense, a viewer must engage in Medea’s grief. Often in contemporary western culture emotions have to be justified, explained, dealt with. They must either be put aside or exploited. What’s missing is the notion that anger and sadness don’t have to be productive. Sometimes there is inherent worth in purely exploring the immense destruction they wreak. Pain and catharsis often go hand in hand. In Greek tragedy, every nerve is exposed. We see the cracks before the vessel shatters. We know the end before it begins. That’s where Medea’s power lies: in her exquisite unraveling. Because Medea is the play’s hero, the audience is given a privileged view inside her head. A reader is forced to recognize the fact that, despite her actions, Medea is a rational human being. She knows what she is doing is wrong, but she does it anyway. Logic and emotion are allowed to exist side by side. 

I think one of the main reasons we read literature is because there are things too complex, too human, to express in words alone. Thesis statements struggle to encompass paradox, emotionality, and irrationality, the way fiction can. Greek tragedy is a highly structured form. It’s easy to understand and often painfully explicit in the points it is trying to make, but it also illustrates an unraveling. It’s about how humans make a mess of things. It gives the audience room to simply grieve. 

Another central aspect of Greek Tragedy is the Chorus. The Chorus is supposed to reflect both society and the audience's reaction to the events of the play. In Medea, the chorus has a surprising amount of sympathy for her actions, though they ultimately condemn them. One of the things I found so astonishing about Medea was that I didn’t feel sympathy, instead, I felt empathy. I didn’t relate to the chorus, I related to Medea herself. I believe that if a straight, cis, white man were to truly read the play, to sit with it, to surrender to the story, he might be able to understand what a woman means when she says: I hate men.