SOURCE: “The Medea Howells Saw,” in American Literature, Vol. 42, No. 1, March, 1970, pp. 83-9.

In the following essay, Sweeney differentiates Grillparzer's Medea from Euripedes' version and contends that Grillparzer's play was the one that influenced W. D. Howells' A Modern Instance.

The connection between A Modern Instance and Medea has long been an accepted fact. Regarding the genesis of the novel, we are told by William M. Gibson that when Howells “witnessed Francesca Janauschek's fiery re-creation on the stage of Medea's love for the self-centered Jason as it turned into hatred and engendered terrible acts of revenge, he said to himself, as he told an interviewer many years later, ‘This is an Indiana divorce case … and the novel was born.’”¹ We know, furthermore, that Howells first referred to the novel as “that New Medea.”²

The issue at hand is the authorship of the Medea Howells saw. Critics who refer...