Litrature Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Litrature - Essay Example In Greek mythology, Medea (Greek, "virility") was the daughter of King Aeà «tes of Colchis (now a territory of modern Georgia), niece of Circe, and later wife to Jason. In the play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, King of Corinth offers him his daughter.The Medea tells the story of the jealousy and revenge of a woman betrayed by her husband. She has left home and father for Jasons sake, and he, after she has borne him children, forsakes her, and betroths himself to Glauce, the daughter of Creon, ruler of Corinth. Creon orders her into banishment that her jealousy may not lead her to do her child some injury. In vain she begs not to be cast forth, and finally asks for but one days delay. This Creon grants, to the undoing of him and his. Jason arrives and reproaches Medea with having provoked her sentence by her own violent temper. Had she had the sense to submit to sovereign power she would never have been thrust away by him. In reply she reminds her husband of what she had once done for him; how for him she had betrayed her father and her people; for his sake had caused Pelias, whom he feared, to be killed by his own daughters. .(Euripides, 2003) The story of â€Å"Wide Sargasso Sea† is set just after the emancipation of the slaves, in that uneasy time when racial relations in the Caribbean were at their most strained. Antoinette (Rhys renames her and has Rochester impose the name of Bertha on her when their relationship dissolves) is descended from the plantation owners, and her father has had many children by negro women. She can be accepted neither by the negro community nor by the representatives of the colonial centre. As a white creole she is nothing. The taint of racial impurity, coupled with the suspicion that she is mentally imbalanced bring about her inevitable downfall. (Rhys,1997) In Medea, protagonist of the play, Medeas homeland is Colchis, an island in the Black Sea, which the Greeks considered the edge of the earth--a