Euripides' Medea and Sophocles' Antigone are two of the most famous women in Greek tragedy. It is the purpose of this paper to compare and contrast these two tragic figures. In the interest of organization, each woman will be generally analyzed and then the two will be criticized together.
Medea is generally considered to be Euripides' masterpiece, and it deals with a woman whose love turns to hatred when she is betrayed. Euripides is very skillful at shifting the audience's feeling for Medea throughout the play. In the beginning she is a woman who has sympathy because Jason has deserted her, who marries Glauce, the daughter of Creon.
Medea is revealed to be a woman of revenge. At first she plots to kill Jason, his new wife, and Creon, but she decides against that. "This much then is the service I would beg from you: If I can find the means or devise any scheme To pay my husband back for what he has done to me--Him and his father-in-law and the girl who married him--Just to keep silent" (Euripides 67).
Medea is successful in helping to bring about the deaths of both Glauce and Creon: they are both poisoned by a deadly drug and they suffer a great deal before they die. Medea might have stopped at these events, and assumed that she had punished Jason enough for what he had done to her. The messenger tells Medea of the death of Glauce and Creon: "It was a fearful sight; and terror held us all from touching the corpse. Her wretched father came suddenly to the house and fell upon the corpse . . . There they lie close, the daughter and the old father, dead bodies, an event he prayed for in his tears" (Euripides 100).
Medea decides that revenge has to cut much deeper, and the only way for her to inflict this upon Jason is by murdering their two children. Medea is torn between her motherly instincts and her desire for cruel punishment against the man who betrayed her. The latter wins out, and she slays the offspring and shows them...