**********WARNING CONTAINS SPOILERS************
As the delicate ceramic pomegranate falls from Gemma Foster’s carmine nailed fingers and splinters into pieces, we know all attempts at reconciliation with her straying husband are over.
It’s war.
The pomegranate - symbolic of marriage - is as irretrievably broken as Gemma’s trust - but not her will.
Far from it.
Immediately plunged into the about-to-be-rocked world of Gemma Foster, the viewer encounters a successful GP, the adoring wife of property developer, Simon Foster, and mother to pre-pubescent Tom. This beautiful family reside in a stunning statement Cotswold house with a bare-brick open-plan kitchen that would have interior design mags hammering on the door.
But this is Simon’s home town, Simon’s neighbourhood, Simon’s friends, and Gemma, like Medea, is the stranger transplanted by marriage to a place where she is regarded with suspicion and envy.
And, in the same way Medea assisted Jason’s quest for the fleece, Gemma has supported her husband through one of his toughest business ventures, only to discover he has fallen in the love with another woman. And his lover Kate, like Glauce, is the daughter of a powerful man - Simon’s main (and secret) financial backer.
Two clues to the husband’s infidelity are introduced within the first few minutes and all too soon Gemma’s extraordinary resourcefulness comes into play, determined to uncover the truth. But we also see her maverick side. Medea bribes Aegeus with her witch’s fertility potion, Gemma promises sleeping pills to a patient in return for snooping on Simon.
Like any of us these days, Gemma turns to the internet for information about her situation, yet in using this very 21st century method she turns up a 17th century text that sums up her feelings perfectly: “Heav'n has no Rage like Love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a Fury like a Woman scorn’d."
Medea’s ability to exercise her vengeance and fury is limited by the society she lives in; distorted by the lack of power in a world where intelligent, creative women turn to witchcraft and sorcery, becoming liminal creatures who cannot not flex their intellectual muscles and realise their own potential alongside men.
And while Medea, and Lady Macbeth suffer the frustration of exercising their power through the men they serve as wives, Ford Madox Ford’s notorious Sylvia Tietjens becomes a petty tyrant of epic proportions. Rich, pretty, spoilt, nothing drives her more than the desire to wreak havoc and misery on her husband. One wonders how things might have been different if she’d put all that effort into a career.
But Gemma Foster refuses to be the victim and boasts that her cleverness will ensure that she doesn’t lose out, if her husband leaves. But in contrast to the unhinged Gone Girl heroine, Amy, who takes murder and self-harm in her stride as she takes revenge on a cheating husband, we are always reminded that Gemma retains a moral compass.
While her ethics may be questionable, she fiercely believes in doing what she sees as the right thing.
She can be weeping and beating her head on the dashboard, watching her life unravel before her eyes as she unearths her husband’s other phone and realises her supposed friends already know about his affair, but it doesn’t stop her from having the cojones to threaten the violent drug-addled boyfriend of one of her patients, or phone the pregnant wife of a patient to tell her about a serious condition he has been concealing.
And, incredibly, on discovering that Kate is pregnant, Gemma’s moral dilemma is that Simon should know that he has fathered a child, even if this threatens their marriage still further.
The backstory of Gemma is subtly revealed. Orphaned at 16, she has attained everything she has and is through her own intelligence, determination and hard work.
But faced with the enormity of her husband’s betrayal, it isn’t enough just to be clever. As a former colleague reminds her, “I’m clever and I’m a drunk who hasn’t showered for three days.” So, while Gemma might share the sexual scheming and ruthless allure of her literary prototypes, she is also a modern heroine who wields genuine power - to own property; to earn money; to have legal redress. Her ambitions may be modest by Lady MacBeth’s standards, but she also wields power in her own right as a pillar of the small community she has joined. She has independent wealth and her own home. She plans to keep it that way.
As the story reaches its denouement, our anticipation teeters on an edge of what we believe this character is capable of - we may know that Medea’s perfectly appalling punishment of Jason was to murder their sons, but we certainly don’t want to believe it of Gemma. Yet, when she returns home from the school pick-up brandishing scissors and a hank of Tom’s hair - but no Tom - we slip under Simon’s skin to live the eviscerating horror of believing our own child to be dead.
It’s then that Gemma plays her next brilliant move, with beautiful timing Tom is despatched home to be greeted by a trembling panic-stricken father who practically prostrates himself with relief at the boy’s feet.
Utterly blind with fury at how he has been played, Simon walks into Gemma’s final trap in a heartbeat, assaulting her and sealing his fate to be branded the adulterous and violent partner.
In its conclusion Dr Foster is no Medea, nor a Lady Macbeth for that matter. The only blood she washes from her hands is her own. She is a feminist heroine; a modern heroine, shaped by a society where scorned women can do far more than sacrifice themselves or their children to get even.
