Medea is the daughter of Aietes, king of Colchis, and the granddaughter of Helios, the god of the sun. A princess of Colchis and a powerful witch, Medea helped Jason on his adventures before they married and settled down in Jason’s native Greece.

From Euripides’s day to our own, Medea’s character has been noted for its depth and complexity. In modern times Medea has been received as a prototypical feminist, a woman who identified with razor-sharp precision the unfairness of women’s treatment in her society. This is certainly true to some extent, but Euripides also makes clear that Medea played the role of wife and mother happily and exactly to societal expectations—until the moment Jason divorced her (10-20). It is Jason’s betrayal that radicalizes Medea—or removes the mask to reveal who she always was.

Medea rages against her second-class status as a woman, and in her anger she sheds the roles by which her society defines women: marriage and motherhood. She is rendered unmarried by Jason’s decision to divorce her, but she embraces this status. Early in the play she appeals to Artemis, the virgin goddess of unmarried women, symbolically divesting herself not only of her identity as a married woman but also reverting herself to a virginal state before marriage.