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“How does it feel with my teeth in your heart?”: Medea’s Persistent Mode of Maternal Agency Through Literary Eras
Thornton, Thyme
Thornton, Thyme
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Abstract
Across classics, authors have presented the mythologies of mothers who fail to conform to traditional modes of maternity and femininity. Mothers like Jocasta and Alcmene attempt to kill their children by “exposing” them and abandoning them in the wilderness. Oedipus’ mother Jocasta pins his ankles together and leaves him on Cithaeron because an oracle warned that he would one day kill his father Laius. Alcmene, fearful of Hera’s wrath, abandoned Heracles in the woods. Although neither Oedipus nor Heracles died from their mother’s exposure, both stories demonstrate the presence of infanticide in classical mythology. Escalating this, the mother of King Pentheus of Thebes, Agave is driven insane by Dionysus and tears her son limb from limb and carried his head back to Thebes on a stake. Each of these mothers transgresses outside of accepted mode of maternity and femininity. Each of them betrayed the accepted traditions of the home and family. But their stories mostly remain underexplored by authors outside of classics. Perhaps this is because they were unsuccessful in their passive attempted infanticide in both Jocasta and Alcmene’s case, or because Agave was possessed by a god and driven to murder her adult son, their stories do not hold the same power that an active and decisive mother does. Thus, there is one classical mother that continues to captivate authors, scholars, and audiences across centuries, genres, and geographies. Medea.
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2023-05-31
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University of Kansas
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989834_1.pdf
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Classical literature, Agency, Autonomy, Maternal, Medea