Recommendations
Books Like Medea by Euripides
The intelligence of the discarded woman
If you were disturbed by Euripides's portrayal of a foreign woman who uses every resource of her intelligence to destroy what has destroyed her — these works share the same exploration of a wronged woman's revenge in a society that offers her no other recourse.
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Buy on AmazonThe Oresteia
by Aeschylus
Aeschylus's trilogy — Clytemnestra, who kills Agamemnon for sacrificing their daughter, is the Medea figure in Aeschylus; the wronged mother's revenge on a larger theological scale.
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Buy on AmazonThe Bacchae
by Euripides
Euripides's final masterpiece — the same explosive force (irrational, devastating, unstoppable) unleashed in a theological frame; Dionysus as Medea's counterpart.
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Buy on AmazonGone Girl
by Gillian Flynn
Flynn's thriller of a woman's terrible intelligence deployed against a husband who has betrayed her — Medea in a contemporary domestic marriage.
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Buy on AmazonWide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys
Rhys's prequel to Jane Eyre — a Caribbean woman destroyed by an English husband who imported her for her money and now wants her gone; Medea's colonial situation in a Victorian frame.
- 5
Buy on AmazonBeloved
by Toni Morrison
Morrison's novel of a mother who kills her child to protect her from a worse fate — the act at the heart of Medea in a different historical context.
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Buy on AmazonA Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Williams's play — Blanche DuBois's destruction in a world that has no place for her; the closest modern dramatic parallel to Medea's situation as an outsider with no resources.
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Buy on AmazonMedea: A Modern Retelling
by Christa Wolf
Wolf's feminist reimagining — Medea as a victim framed by the Greek world that destroyed her; the most important modern response to Euripides's play.
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Buy on AmazonThe Color Purple
by Alice Walker
Walker's novel of a woman finding agency in a society that has defined her as having none — the Medea situation with a different resolution; survival rather than destruction.
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