Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(63)

We are left in no doubt that Phaedra would have gone to her grave without ever speaking to or about Hippolytus and her feelings for him. She does not wish to act on her desire, she simply wishes to die so her suffering can be over. The nurse exploits her weakness, which is her anxiety for the life her children will have after she is gone. Just as Alcestis worried that Admetus might prefer a new wife who would treat her children harshly, here we see Euripides dramatize the opposite side of the same coin: a stepmother provoked to terrible anxiety that her children will be passed over in favour of her husband’s older son (whom the nurse, incidentally, calls nothon – ‘a bastard’)27 after her death. And this is a real, plausible fear: Hippolytus is older than her children, he might well inherit Theseus’ property if Phaedra isn’t around to advance her own offspring’s cause. We have already seen that Hippolytus is immune to the suggestion that he might prefer not to insult a powerful goddess. If he is impervious to social mores, Phaedra might well be afraid that he would disinherit her children.

Phaedra now delivers her big monologue, telling the chorus and the nurse how she has tried to keep silent, to quash her desire, to wish for death. She wants to shame neither her husband nor her children.28 If Euripides had written Phaedra as a shameless hussy in his first attempt to tell this story, he has completely changed her in this second version. Shame is an overwhelming prospect for her; she will die rather than incur it. So what goes wrong?

The nurse now offers the kind of tricksy, immoral argument that the comic playwright Aristophanes would have so much fun suggesting Euripides himself believed. How can you, she asks, a mortal woman, resist the power of the goddess of love? When even Zeus is overwhelmed by her? Aphrodite can bend the king of the gods to her will and you try to resist her? Isn’t it hubris, to wish yourself stronger than a god?29 Anyway, men don’t solve problems, women have to find the answers. We might think the nurse is as immoral as her argument implies, and perhaps she is. Certainly she is Aphrodite’s unwitting servant, the catalyst of all the carnage which is about to unfold. Tempting as it is to condemn her outright, we must remember that she is genuinely fearful that her mistress will die. She makes things infinitely worse – for Phaedra and Hippolytus and Theseus – but she does seem to act with the best intentions.

Phaedra resists her argument, however, and tells her never to speak this way again. You speak convincingly but shamefully, she says.30 The nurse says she will go and find a treatment for Phaedra’s condition. Please don’t say anything to Hippolytus, Phaedra begs. Leave it to me, replies the nurse. I’ll sort things out.31 And, of course, she does exactly what Phaedra fears: goes straight to Hippolytus – whom she and we know despises the idea of sex with anyone, let alone his stepmother – and tells him of Phaedra’s love for him. As anyone but the nurse could have foreseen, he responds with fury, which Phaedra can hear from the stage. She has destroyed me,32 Phaedra tells the chorus.

Hippolytus now comes onstage, although he doesn’t notice or speak to Phaedra. She can still hear him, however. Before revealing Phaedra’s secret, the nurse had managed to persuade Hippolytus that he must swear to keep silent about it. He willingly made this pledge, but now regrets it and plans to disregard it: my tongue swore, he says, my mind is unsworn.33

This line would be quoted by Aristophanes as archetypally Euripidean: what a terrible influence the playwright must have been on the ordinary men of Athens. All able to break their word, because Hippolytus didn’t think a pledge meant anything. Except, of course, that audiences are not generally that gullible. And besides, in spite of what he says in this moment of anger, Hippolytus does keep his word. The problem is that Phaedra believes him when he says he will not.

Hippolytus then delivers a long, misogynistic screed: not only is his stepmother evil, but so are all women. They’re all sluts and the only reason he is keeping his word to the nurse is because he fears that the gods punish perjurers. He will leave the house until Theseus returns. And he does.

It’s a wretched fate to be a woman,34 Phaedra says, after Hippolytus has gone. Now what? She dismisses the nurse, swears the chorus to secrecy and tells them that she has thought of a way to save her children’s reputation.35 She will take her own life, destroyed by Aphrodite. We are halfway through the play and everything is going according to the goddess’ plan. Phaedra leaves the stage, the chorus sing and, as they finish, we hear a slave crying out from the palace that the queen is dead. Phaedra has hanged herself.

At this point, Theseus appears, asking if anyone can tell him what’s going on. He rushes to Phaedra’s body and finds a note in her hand addressed to him. In this, we discover, she has denounced Hippolytus as a rapist, claiming his attack has prompted her to die by her own hand. Theseus curses his son, testing the apparent gift he has been given by Poseidon (he seems uncertain whether or not Poseidon’s curses will work, but we know from Aphrodite’s opening monologue that they are part of her plan). Hippolytus now also arrives on stage and finds that Phaedra has lied about him. Theseus is convinced of his guilt and condemns him to exile. Hippolytus – interestingly – doesn’t break his oath, in spite of his earlier threat to do so. He maintains his silence about Phaedra’s passion for him, as he had sworn he would. He does defend himself, by saying that he despises the idea of love and that, anyway, Phaedra was hardly the most beautiful woman in the world.36 He swears one last time that he did not lay hands on Phaedra, that he doesn’t know what made her take her own life.