Medea is the protagonist of Euripides’ tragedy and a richly varied figure in Greek and later poetry. As a foreign woman, magician, lover, wife, and mother, she stands at the intersection of exile and power. Jason’s abandonment turns her intelligence and passion toward revenge, producing one of drama’s most disturbing acts of violence. Poets and dramatists have continued to reinterpret her as monster, wronged outsider, feminist rebel, and tragic embodiment of betrayed desire.

Medea is the powerful princess and sorceress in Greek myth and Euripides’ tragedy. She helps Jason obtain the Golden Fleece, marries him, and later takes devastating revenge when he abandons her for another marriage. She can represent betrayal, rage, exile, intelligence, and the destructive consequences of denying a person’s agency. Her characterization is deliberately disturbing because sympathy for her suffering conflicts with horror at her actions.