And by the final scene it is with Jason whom the audience shared the feelings Aristotle proclaimed so essential to drama as he learns of not only the deaths of his new bride and father in law, but also the deaths of his own two sons and the hands of their mother.
One of Euripides" trademarks was to take an ancient myth as his subject matter and infuse it with the current social and political trends of his day. Palmer terms these "conscious anachronisms" and cites them as underlying conflicts in Euripidean plays. By introducing these anachronisms he is able to turn the characters into his audience's contemporaries. Therefore, the attitudes and ideals of the 5th century are prominent throughout his plays. It becomes increasingly hard for the audiences of later centuries to understand Euripidean plays in the context they were written. Palmer ascertains that although Medea has always been understood to be "a 5th century woman in revolt" , Jason must be perceived to exist in the same context. Jason's struggle stems not from his heroism but rather from his being a Greek citizen who must conform to Athenian laws. Because he became a "fallen hero" he longed to "crawl back into the sheltering anonymity of the Greek patriarchal system" .
Jason's legacy could only live on through his heirs; such was the social structure of 5th century Greece. And although he had two sons, they were disqualified because they were considered bastards, or noithoi. Because Medea had killed her father and brother, she had no one to "carry out the legitimate acts of engue and ekdosis" and therefore their marriage was not recognized. Due to the seeming lack of dowry as well, Medea appeared to be nothing more than a partner of Jason's, unrecognized by the polis as his wife. Medea, however, refuses to accept this narrow categorization of her and "much of the play concerns itself with her fight to maintain herself as the only mate Jason shall ever have.
