When John Frobisher, the underling minister in the BBC science fiction
Torchwood Children of Earth, takes a gun to his two daughters, and then his wife, and, after a pause, himself, in a scene set behind doors (rather like the offstage murders in Medea), the viewer's response contains pity rather than the outrage we all tend to feel at Medea's murderous action in Euripides'
Medea. Frobisher is saving the children from what he considers a fate worth than death. Medea's motives are less pure, but maybe she is saving the children, too. With Jason repudiating the marriage, the children become illegitimate. Certainly, she loves them and will suffer from their death. Had she been a man, perhaps we would not have been so offended by her actions.
In her chapter on victims and victimizers, in Greek Tragedy, Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz examines Medea's murder of her children, focusing on the contradictions and dualities in Medea. Medea is a demi-mortal, a masculine woman, and a barbarian in a Greek city. Medea only plays at being the little woman when she can use the ploy to get her way. Her dowry, so to speak, was the Golden Fleece, accompanied by assorted murders. She is concerned with the masculine heroic virtues of honor, bravery, and justice, with helping friends and harming enemies, whose number chiefly includes Jason.
With her infanticide, Medea gets revenge on her enemy and shows that she is not a coward. "It takes guts" is not what we normally think of when we look at a child-killing mother.
Rabinowitz says Medea kills them because "she does not want to provide her enemies with opportunity to laugh at her." Medea acts to uphold the sanctity of oaths -- another male aristocratic concern -- in the face of the sophistic oath-breaker Jason. In this, Rabinowitz suggests Medea may be becoming "the divinity that protects oaths". Godlike, Medea is certainly not concerned about consequences: she escapes in the chariot of the Sun on her way to Aegeus of Athens and to establish a cult for her children.
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