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  • Filicide in Euripides’ Medea:A Biopoetic Approach*
  • Maria Mackay (bio) and Arlene L. Allan (bio)

In one of the three tragedies by Euripides performed at Athens in 431 BCE, the playwright presented his version of the story of Jason and Medea. He did not begin with their meeting in Colchis, the place to which Jason had sailed on a quest set by Pelias to retrieve the Golden Fleece and thereby, he believed, to regain his kingship of Iolcus. Nor did he begin with Jason and Medea’s arrival back in Greece and the troubles they encountered in their failed attempt to regain his patrimony from the usurper-king who sent him on his quest. Rather, Euripides begins his tragedy with Jason and Medea, now with two young sons, in Corinth, clearly sometime after they had fled as exiles from Iolcus. The play opens with Medea’s long-time confidante, her Nurse, ruing the day that Jason entered Medea’s life, for now, it seems, he has casually cast her aside in favor of making a new marriage with the daughter of Corinth’s ruler. This is the terrible deed that spurs Medea to action. Abandoned by her husband, her sole provider of parental and financial support, she retaliates, bringing to bear any means at her disposal to hurt those who have hurt her—not only her husband and his new bride and father-in-law, but even, necessarily, Medea’s own children.

Euripides’ portrayal of the title character in Medea has, it has been argued, influenced all further versions of the Medea myth, especially her association with Corinth, the death of her children by her own hand, and her escape in the Sun’s chariot.1 Of Euripides’ new elements of characterization, it was the filicide of her children that most completely determined perceptions of Medea’s essential character. This particular event has inspired a significant number of scholarly discussions of the play, offering a variety of ways to read the tragedy from the perspective of both ancient and modern audiences. For instance, because of her act of child-murder, many modern critics have consistently viewed Medea as a woman who loses more than she gains, for example, as she sacrifices her femininity to the pursuit of more properly masculine concerns.2 A number of critics point to the irrevocable loss of Medea’s humanity,3 but as Carrie Cowherd (1983, 135) observes, the fact that Medea is no longer a mother does not entail she is no longer human. Several critics provide a specifically feminist reading of the play, interpreting Medea as an everywoman suffering under a patriarchal regime,4 while others argue that such a feminist interpretation is too ideologically narrow.5 In addition to contemporary gender [End Page 59] questions, politicized postmodern criticism has focused on perceived ethnicity issues, especially on Greek self-definition in contrast to the ‘barbarian.’ While some critics identify important ambiguities of ethnicity in her characterization,6 others argue that ethnicity is peripheral or irrelevant to Medea’s story.7

In the following discussion, we offer an analysis of Medea’s response to her situation through an evolutionary literary critical approach. Evolutionary literary criticism (biopoetics), which is based on the findings of evolutionary psychology, holds that humans universally share innate feelings and motivations. Because of this, while evolutionary psychology can illuminate literary study, the universality of particular elements of fiction can contribute to a better understanding of human nature.8

This interface between evolutionary psychology and narrative has the potential to offer a new way of appreciating and explaining Medea’s perennial appeal as a literary character of depth and complexity. By considering Medea’s actions and motivations as reflecting the sociobiological drives shared by humans as evolved animals, we offer an explanation for why this story has simultaneously so fascinated and disgusted us for so long: it is a story informed by the irreconcilability of conflicting biologically evolved behavior in relation to reproductive success and parental investment.9

Biopoetics

Evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby (2001, 8–9) have found that the phenomenon of human preoccupation with the imagined worlds of narrative fiction is both cross-cultural and universal. Evoking Aristotle...

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