Euripides' Medea & Freud's Dora

The purpose of this research is to examine the theme of mad and menacing women by means of a consideration of the characters of Medea, created by Euripides, and Dora, described by Freud. The plan of the research will be to set forth in general terms the problems confronted by each and then to discuss the ways in which the reactions of each differ, as well as the ways in which their predicaments and circumstances overlap and converge.

In a number of ways, the madness and menace of Medea and Dora come about because of the same thing: rejection by the one each loves best. Medea is a cast-off first wife, a casualty of her husband's careerist ambition who unexpectedly finds herself put in the role of a single mother. Dora is a daughter who is (or anyway feels) displaced in her father's affections, first by her mother, from whom Dora was alienated, and then by her father's mistress, whom Dora considered a friend. Freud explains Dora's situation in Oedipal terms, saying that "her affection for her father was a much stronger one than she knew or than she would have cared to admit: In fact, that she was in love with him" (Freud 1413).

The principal difference between the reactions of Medea and Dora to the problems they confront is that Medea projects her reactions outward and Dora, for the most part, turns them inward. But within the choices of each, complex forces are at work that demonstrate each character's vulnerability on one hand and menacing aggression on the other. Medea respo

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e of her increasingly unhealthy behavior and because her parents have discovered a draft of a suicide note. Dora's father denies that his relationship with Frau K. is improper, a rejection of his daughter that can be compared to Jason's rejection of Medea and his culpability in having Medea and her children exiled, ostensibly for their own good but really for Jason's social comfort. Dora, for her part, dislikes her mother and feels betrayed by Frau K., who it appears has been her confidante only with a view toward winning the affections of her father. Dora told her father about Herr K's proposition but was disbelieved. The evidence of the marriage of Dora's parents is that the love between husband and wife had long been poisoned by the husband's history of syphilis both before and after the marriage and partly by the affair with Frau K. Dora attempts to manipulate her situation, forcing a confrontation with her father about the scandal with Frau K., but it does not serve her very well. Ultimately, she reacts by withdrawing into herself, entirely preoccupied with her father's dalliance and having no disinterested ally in her anxiety, except Herr K., who it appears wants her as a mistress rather than friend. In the process, Dora dev

Category: Psychology - E