The Woman Scorned

I recently finished reading the short drama by Euripides , Medea. Medea is the ultimate woman scorned. She is married to Jason, the man who was able to procure the golden fleece. She helped him to get the fleece, and she had fallen in love with him. They married, and she gave him two beautiful children. But in our drama, we find her after she has discovered that he has married the princess, the daughter of the king of the and. This is almost a modern tale of a divorce, the anger, the fighting, and the resentment. Their children are found caught in the middle. Medea's revenge on Jason, though largely an extreme, is almost necessary and cathartic. She poisons the gift that she sends to the princess, her husbands new bride. The results of which are horrific when the reader hears from the messenger. The poison does not cause a quiet death, but one of retching and melting of skin. The disturbing image of the princess' father, the king, finding the corpse, and falling upon that body, sharing the poor one's fate burns into the readers mind. Medea, having heard this, proceeds to kill her own children in order to get back at Jason. Overkill? I think so.