Man by nature is an ambivalent creature, subject to the battle between his primal instincts, and the accumulated layers of civilization which he himself created. It is thus only natural for the institutions that he established, such as marriage, to also reflect the ambivalence of their creator, sometimes displaying images of order and civility, and other times, of strife and destruction. Marriage is traditionally illustrated in literature as a mechanism for creation and union; yet, though it can bind two people together, it can also be the cause of each party's downfall and can ravage the lives of the people around them. War, in contrast, though seemingly exists to destroy human compacts and governments, may in fact create a bond between two people that can be intensified by the horrific and senseless slaughter in its wake. However, a bond based on such a problematic foundation is bound to self-destruct, in the same way that a marriage collapses when the people it binds are fundamentally dysfunctional. These two presumably unrelated situations, when perceived through the context of man's nature, can thus be linked together as manifestations of human ambivalence, as like man himself, they are both agents of creation and of devastation.
In the play Medea, the ambivalence of marriage is illustrated in the interplay between Jason and Medea after Jason decides to marry Glauke, daughter of the king of Corinth. Jason and Medea's union is particularly ambivalent, as both these two characters themselves display an unstable sense of logic. Indeed, superficially, their marriage seems to meet all the requirements for a successful union in antiquity, especially because of the presence of their children. Medea herself tells Jason that "if [children] had not been, you would have had an excuse of another wedding,"" clearly suggesting that children is the deciding factor of whether a marriage is sound or not.
