The Chorus In Medea Essay

In the play Medea, the enchantress Medea seeks revenge on her husband for marrying another woman and abandoning her. Like most Greek plays, the chorus is used to guide the audience’s opinions and feelings. Euripides uses the chorus to influence the audience’s the perception and sympathy of Medea throughout the play. In the play, the chorus, consisting of a group of Corinthian women, originally supports Medea’s desire for revenge, but its view changes as the play progresses. At the beginning of the play, the chorus supports Medea due to the unequal treatment of women in society, but when Medea plans to kill her children, it is no longer sympathetic to her cause.
At the beginning of the play, the chorus desires to console Medea after they hear her
weeping. However, when Medea appears to the chorus, she is calm and collected. Medea then describes the trials that women face by telling the chorus:
Surely, of all creatures that have life and will, we women
Are the most wretched. When, for an extravagant sum,
We have bought a husband, we must then accept him as
Possessor of our body. This is to aggravate
Wrong with worse wrong. Then the great question: will the man
We get be bad or good? For women, divorce is not
Respectable; to repel the man, not possible. (24)
Medea’s speech resonates with the chorus of women, who have also faced the same treatment. The chorus then agrees to stay silent about Medea’s revenge plot because they believe that punishing “Jason [would] be just.” (25). Because of Medea’s speech, the chorus became more sympathetic to her cause. The frustrations of the chorus continue to be highlighted as the play progresses.
Medea decides to kill Jason’s new wife by poisoning her coronet. She claims that “women [are] useless for honest purposes, / but in all kinds of evil [they] are skilled practitioners” (29). The chorus responds by bitterly stating: Streams of the sacred rivers flow uphill; Tradition, order, all things are reversed: Deceit is men’s device now, Men’s oaths are god’s dishonour. Legend will now reverse our reputation: A time comes when the female sex is honoured: That old discordant slander Shall no more hold us slander (29)
The chorus interprets Jason’s actions as more deceitful than the disloyalty that is often attributed to women causing all roles to be reversed. The treatment of women in society is one of the primary factors that contributes to the chorus’ support of Medea. Near the end of the play, Medea decides that the only way to fully obtain revenge on Jason is to kill her children. The chorus begins to beg her to reconsider her actions be by pleading: How will Athens welcome You, the child-killer Whose presence is pollution? Contemplate the blow stuck at a child, Weigh the blood you take upon you, Medea, by your
knees, By every pledge or appeal we beseech you, Do not slaughter your children! (43)
The chorus continues to plead with Medea for the children’s lives, but they “have no more hope, / no more hope that the children can live” (47). This emotional appeal does not reach Medea, who ultimately murders her children. The chorus is appalled by Medea’s actions and loses sympathy for her. The chorus is used to reinforce the audience’s horror at Medea’s actions. Most Greek plays use the chorus to direct the audience’s feelings and views. In the play, the chorus originally supported Medea’s actions throughout the play because it believed that it was justifiable. The unfair treatment that Medea faced made the chorus more aware of their own oppression. However, when Medea decide to kill her children, the chorus found her actions to be too extreme. The chorus in the play was used to highlight and reflect the audience’s reactions to the ongoing action. The sympathetic chorus of the beginning was used to influence the audience’s perception of Medea and the struggles that she faced. When she decides to murder her children, however, the chorus is used to indicate the shift in opinions.