Though Medea defines her self-debate in Act Five as between "mother" and "wife", the infanticide wipes out both aspects of her relationship to Jason; indeed, it wipes out the entire relationship, so that she feels momentarily as if she were the young Colchian princess once again (982-83). But she is actually the mature Medea. What she achieves, what she has been working toward throughout the play, is an autonomous selfhood, untrammeled, able to impose itself on others. She realizes herself fully, achieves a personal power far beyond that of any other figure in the play and magnified by by her association with the power of moon and earth, fire and sea: "Now I am Medea; my genius has grown through evils" (910). At one level, this line plays on her name: "I am the woman who thinks, who has cunning intelligence", in allusion to the roots mēd- and mēt-. At another level it has metadramatic quality: "I am that Medea famed for doing these deeds, that Medea whose story will be read millennia later." But its primary suggestion is, "I have reached the fullness of my selfhood, the potential that was always within me."
—John G. Fitch, introduction to Seneca's Medea
