Medea

The other great Greek female protagonist who defies the social order — where Medea acts from passion and personal rage, Antigone acts from divine principle; both terrify the male authorities who face them for different reasons

The paradigm case of Greek tragedy — Oedipus destroys himself through the pursuit of truth, Medea destroys others through the pursuit of revenge; together they define the two poles of tragic action

Another story of an outsider in a society that never fully accepted them — Othello and Medea are both foreign, both passionate, both destroyed by the gap between their inner world and the social world that uses and discards them

Morrison explicitly cited Medea as a model — Sethe kills her daughter to prevent her return to slavery, raising the same question Euripides raises: can a mother's love justify a mother's violence?

Both plays examine communities that create the conditions for catastrophe and then blame the individuals who respond to those conditions — Abigail Williams and Medea are both products of systems that gave them no legitimate outlet

Nora's departure from her marriage shocked 19th-century audiences the way Medea shocked 5th-century Athens — both plays dramatize what happens when a woman refuses to accept the role her society has assigned her