Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(66)

While we might – again – sympathize with Phaedra’s battered emotions, there is no excusing what she does next. She does not tell Theseus of his mistake and instead rages at the nurse: her jealousy means she also wants Theseus to kill Aricia. Ted Hughes gives this monologue absolutely everything: ‘My own hands are twitching/ To squeeze the life out of that woman,/ To empty that innocent blood out of her carcase/ And smash her to nothing.’

In Act Five, we find Hippolytus and Aricia trying to work out what they should do, given that Hippolytus is cursed and his reputation is ruined. Hippolytus leaves and Theseus arrives, whereupon Aricia attempts the role that Artemis played in the Euripides version. She tells Theseus that Hippolytus is the victim of slander, but Theseus despises her family and, anyway, she does not have the authority of a goddess so he doesn’t believe her. Panope – the all-seeing servant – appears on stage to say that the nurse has thrown herself into the sea and that Phaedra wishes to die. Theseus realizes that his son may be innocent after all, and calls for him to be brought back. But Théraméne appears alone because – as in Euripides – a bull has risen from the sea and wiped out Hippolytus. The king’s son is dead. His last words were much as in Euripides: ‘“The gods have taken my life,” he whispered.’

But Théraméne and Theseus are much less forgiving: both blame Phaedra for the death of Hippolytus. ‘He is your victim,’ Theseus tells her. She confesses the lie and calls herself a monster, ‘insane with an incestuous passion’. And with her confession, she dies. Theseus wishes that the results of her evil could die with her. But the play ends with him adopting the previously despised Aricia as his daughter.

The central conflict of Euripides’ play is essentially linear: where on the line drawn between chastity, personified by Artemis, and overwhelming, indiscriminate sexual passion, personified by Aphrodite, do we place ourselves? For Hippolytus, it’s right at one end: total chastity. For the other characters in the play, things are more nuanced. But in Racine’s play, the structure has multiple dimensions: Phaedra loves Hippolytus, so pretends to hate him; Hippolytus loves Aricia, so pretends to ignore her; Aricia loves Hippolytus, but is hated by his father, Theseus, who loves Phaedra and doesn’t trust Hippolytus. And then there is the nurse, who loves Phaedra but who cannot save herself or her mistress from disaster. The politics of who rules when a king dies, and who is caught out if he then returns alive – this is a major change from the absolutes we find in Euripides. His Phaedra is motivated to make her false allegation by the belief that her children will be ruined if she does not. Racine’s Phaedra certainly cares about her children, but she is motivated to let the false allegation stand because of the sexual jealousy she feels for Aricia.

It’s interesting that we may find ourselves sympathizing with Euripides’ Phaedra more than Racine’s. The former creates the slander that kills an innocent young man. But her absolute powerlessness in the face of a divine plot she cannot control or even influence makes her more pitiable than villainous. Whereas Racine’s Phaedra is operating on a far more human scale of lust and jealousy, and even though she does not create the falsehood which kills Hippolytus, she stands by it from wholly base motives.

But what if we read Euripides’ play in the light of all we know about Ariadne, and Theseus’ extensive, destructive sexual adventures? Would it change the way we view his wretched Phaedra? The nurse finally persuades the queen to confess that it is love, specifically love for Hippolytus, which is causing her to sicken almost to death. And she does this by reminding Phaedra that her children will be shunted into obscurity by Hippolytus if she dies while they are still young. By the end of the play, Phaedra is dead, Hippolytus is dead, and her children are Theseus’ only heirs. She has – perhaps – achieved her ambition without ever crystallizing it in her thoughts. Theseus’ line from his previous wife, or sexual partner, or rape victim (we cannot forget that Antiope/Hippolyta, the Amazon mother of Hippolytus, has a shifting status in Theseus’ life, depending on who is telling the myth) has been obliterated. A healthy older son has been removed from the equation so Phaedra’s sons can inherit their father’s property and titles. Could we read this play as a horrifying revenge on Theseus, for the damage he did to Phaedra’s family: killing her brother Asterion (the Minotaur), and abandoning her sister alone on the shores of Naxos? We certainly could. Read this way, Phaedra may still be Aphrodite’s pawn (as are all the characters in Euripides’ play, except Artemis), but she is also engaged in retributive justice. The play is no less troubling on this reading, but perhaps it acquires an extra dimension. And so does Phaedra, the wicked stepmother who defends her young and destroys all threats to their future, even at the cost of her own life.





Medea




THE VIDEO OF ‘HOLD UP’ BEGINS WITH BEYONCé SWIMMING through the rooms of a house filled with water. In a voiceover she explains the many ways she has tried to change, to make herself more amenable, less challenging. She seems to speak for all the women who have been told they are somehow too much. The actions she lists become more extreme, more symbolic: fasted for sixty days, wore white, bathed in bleach. She moves through the water like a mermaid. But then comes the real question: is he cheating on her? And then the camera cuts to a huge pair of doors, flanked by four vast Ionic columns: this house or palace is Neoclassical in style. Beyoncé flings open the doors and water floods out around her, flows down a stone staircase. She walks down the stairs in a saffron gown (a colour often worn by young women in Greek myth: Iphigenia was described as wearing one in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon.1 There is even a word in Greek – krokotophoreo – which means ‘to wear a yellow dress’). As she strides through the streets, she acquires a pair of mighty heels and a baseball bat, with which she smashes fire hydrants, CCTV cameras and the windows of assorted cars. She wonders if it’s worse to look jealous or crazy. Eventually, she smashes the camera filming her, and drops the bat on the ground. Jealous or crazy? Perhaps she is both. The message is clear: cheat on her at your peril. Her revenge will be public and spectacular. As William Congreve put it, ‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turn’d, nor hell a fury like a woman scorn’d.’2