Book Review: "The Witch of Colchis"

Rosie Hewlett has crafted a compelling, wrenching, and deeply tragic retelling of Medea, one of the most infamous women of ancient myth.

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Warning: Full spoilers for the book follow.

Here lately I can’t seem to get enough of myth retellings. No matter how many of them I read, and no matter how often they retread the same ground–I’ve honestly lost track of just how many retellings of Medusa I’ve seen on bookshelves over the past few years–I keep chasing the high that I got from reading Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles all those years ago. One of the more remarkable recent retellings that’s come across my desk is Rose Hewlett’s The Witch of Colchis. As one might guess from the title, the subject of the book is none other than Medea, perhaps one of the most infamous women to have emerged from ancient Greek myth.

The novel follows the usual beats that we associate with Medea’s story. After a deeply unhappy childhood in the kingdom of Colchis, she ends up helping the stranger Jason gain the Golden Fleece, before going with him back to his native kingdom. Once there, however, things take an even darker turn and, upon moving to Corinth, things go from bad to worse as Jason spurns her and the magic she wields, leading to Medea’s submission to the darkness inside of her. After slaying her own children, she flees the city of Corinth and, as the novel draws to a close, she returns to Colchis to reign as its queen, having sacrificed everything, even her humanity, for her love.

Hewlett doesn’t shy away from the darker aspects of Medea’s childhood on Colchis, and she shows us that even the most monstrous of figures usually don’t start out that way, and Medea is tormented and abused by both her father and her brother. Given the way that Medea was repeatedly mistreated and abused by the very man that was supposed to guide and take care of her, is it any wonder that she eventually gave in to the darkness festering inside of her, with disastrous consequences for both her and everyone around her? Any of us would be hard-pressed to hold on to our humanity, particularly if we were blessed (or cursed) with Medea’s gift of magic and the power that it brings along with it.

There are some glimmers of brightness and hope during these years, most of which revolve around Medea’s aunt Circe, who sees in her a vast magical potential that few others have dared to recognize, let alien to praise. Even Circe, however, eventually turns her face away from her niece when Medea refuses to accept that Jason, for all of his promises of love, is really only out for himself and that he will leave her once the chance presents itself. Time and again, however, Medea lets her desperate desire for human connection and love outweigh her good judgment, with destructive consequences for everyone concerned.

Indeed, this is a recurring theme throughout much of The Witch of Colchis. So desperate is Medea for some small crumb of human affection that she will take whatever is given to her, even if it means binding herself ever more tightly to a man who will never be able to love her. Anyone who has ever grown up in such circumstances will no doubt find this part of Medea’s character arc to be both quite familiar and particularly poignant (even devastating). There’s something especially wrenching about the fact that Medea is even willing to sacrifice her burgeoning friendship with the warrior Atalanta so that she can remain close to Jason.

For me, though, the most powerful part comes after they have moved to Corinth and have sought to build a new life there. This part of the story picks up ten years after the fateful events in Colchis and Jason’s native Iolcus, and it’s clear that there is a widening gulf between Medea and Jason, a chasm that can never fully be bridged. When it comes right down to it, Jason is simply, as so many have tried to tell Medea, a man who excels at using others to cover up his own inadequacies. For his part, Jason seems to at least subconsciously realize this, which helps to explain why he remains so furious with her for refusing to become his footstool.

Now, I will say that I did find it at times a bit difficult to really buy that Medea was ever really in love with Jason. I’m not sure if this was deliberate on Hewlett’s part, but it did make it seem as if Jason was a cad and that Medea, as an incredibly intelligent woman, should have seen through his bullshit from the beginning. At the same time, the latter portions of the novel are particularly wrenching, as we spend time inside Medea’s head as her monstrous magic slowly overtakes her, turning down a perilous path from which there can be no return.

It’s no easy task to breathe some new life into a figure as fought over and endlessly reclaimed as Medea, but somehow Hewlett has managed to do that. She doesn’t work overly hard to redeem Medea or to excuse her actions. Instead, she opts for the more difficult task of explaining them, of making them explicable to a modern reader. Since we spend the majority of the novel inside of her own thoughts, we understand her, even as we remain horrified at her actions. These two emotional responses sit uncomfortably next to one another while reading The Witch of Colchis, and therein lies its brilliance as an adaptation and revision of one of antiquity’s most enduring myths.

There’s something more than a little heartbreaking about the final chapter, which sees Medea’s sister Chalciope coming to visit her in her isolated existence in Colchis. By this point Medea has so thoroughly drawn into herself that she is more goddess than human, untouchable by anything so quaint as human emotion. Yet, for all of the darkness and pessimism of this final chapter, there is still hope that, at some point, she will eventually be able to find her way out of the pit of despair into which she has fallen. Chalciope, despite all of the reasons she might have to leave her sister behind, refuses to give up on her, and the last words of the novel are ones of hope springing eternal despite all of the reasons to doubt. Given the extent to which Medea has spent so much time in the novel thinking about how she can never be reunited with her beloved sibling, this note hits you right in the feels.

Suffice it to say, then, that I really quite loved The Witch of Colchis. It’s one of those rare myth retellings that really does raise itself above the rest of the pack. Hewlett’s prose is exquisitely crafted, with a raw power that continues to gain momentum as the story goes on and Medea retreats ever further into her own mind and into the seductive embrace of her burgeoning powers. Moreover, the novel also demonstrates the extent to which great power is often as much a blessing as a curse. Medea’s tragedy is that she was unable to master that power. Instead, it slowly ate her from the inside out until she was nothing more than its avatar.

Nevertheless hope springs eternal, and we’re left with the frail but enduring hope that someday, somehow, Medea will find her way back. Thus is the enduring power of myth.