“She is a pregnant horror as she stands”
“She is a pregnant horror as she stands”

Medea and the Other in Amy Levy’s “Medea. A Fragment in Drama Form”

Author(s): Dorota Osińska
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Theory of Literature, British Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Medea; Amy Levy; late Victorian poetry; monstrosity; female other; revisionism; Other
Summary/Abstract: The vision of mythological Medea allures and repels the Victorians. The late Victorian women writers recognised the powerful figure of the Colchian princess, who has served as the embodiment of female cruelty and brutality. However, women authors saw the need to portray Medea not exclusively as a ruthless killer, but rather as a desperate woman entangled in the web of social, and marital constraints. One of these writers was Amy Levy, an English poet, whose insights into the Woman Question have recently been rediscovered by literary scholars. In this article, I explore how Medea, as reworked by Levy, personifies the concept of the Other in nineteenth century English literature. Looking at Medea through the lens of monstrosity theories, I argue that Medea’s depiction becomes symptomatic of the larger problem of perception of unconventional women in late Victorian middle-class society.

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