Racine's "Phèdre" & Sophocles' "Antigone": pre-class thoughts

Alexandre Cabenal - Phèdre - 1880

The choice of Racine's Phèdre, as opposed to an older text, is interesting because, although it's based on a Greek myth, it was written and performed in France in 1677.  The fact that it is presented in a "play" format and has been translated into English, and is, in essence a homage to the ancient playwrights allows us to group this tale with those written by the Greek philosophers; however, we must also be aware that the intended audience was seventeenth-century Europe.  Thus, when Hippolytus pledges his "soul" to Aricia, we can assume that our modern, Christian understanding of the soul applies.  The removal of the Greek chorus and class markers such as the ownership of slaves have also been omitted, which brings the setting closer to modern day.  Racine's modernisation of the play focusses on the character rather than the plot; we can assume that the complicated, incestuous, love-drama unfolds with the same understanding that it would have today for a modern audience. 

In the sixteenth century The Canturbury Tales Chaucer presents Thesius as an icon of masculine power. The "Knight's Tale" version of Thesius has no patience for emotional weakness - he tamed his Amazon Queen and restores masculine order (one-on-one combat) over Palamon and Arcite's feud over Emily. Racine's version of Thesius is anything but rational, and and his wife Phèdre is anything but tamed. Creon's hubris and demise, however, falls well within Chaucer's portrait of him as a tyrant who loses battles.

For me, Phèdre pairs better with Medea than Antigone.  Like Medea, Phèdre is a woman who's passion runs out of control, eventually becoming the root of tragedy not only for all players involved, but as the characters are royalty, the tragedy befalls the entire kingdom. Both women use deceit and poison (Phèdre kills herself with the poison that "Medea brought to Athens" (88)), both women are lashing out due to jealousy and pride, and both women are vindicated by the gods.

Written shortly after Shakespeare's and Molière's time, Racine focusses on the love-triangle aspect of the tragedy, rather than the question of politics, inheritance, hypergamy, or vows that we see in Medea.  Although aspects of the plot remain intact, the focus is on the mainly darker sides of love, pride, obsession, filial loyalty, and ultimately, the tragic results of Phèdre's jealousy.  Like in Medea, supernatural forces conspire to give the passionate acts a sense of validation, although, as with Medea's chariot exit, I am struggling to understand why this is so.

Sophocles' focus on "divine law" in Antigone may hold clues to my questions surrounding the god's vindication of Medea and Phèdre. The driving force in this text is passion; Creon's reasonable back-pedealing of his punishments and reinstatement of order as per the rules of divine law come far too late for salvation, and Antigone's rescue of Polyneices' body is  fueled by passion, un-hindered by Ismene's futile attempts to respect both earthly and divine order.  Like her brothers, Antigone may have been doomed from the start because she was the product of an unclean union (Oedipus and his mother), however, despite her lineage, she acted virtuously and respected her family's honour and the will of the gods.  The rational Ismene avoids this fate (at least in this text), but her lack of passionate action also removes her own agency; she is a character that things happen to, not one who makes things happen.  The element of prophecy in Antigone is also interesting, and distinctly missing from the seventeenth century French piece. Like Oedipus, Creon's fate is sealed by the prophet's words, and like Oedipus, there is nothing that Creon can do to avoid this fate.

An interesting underlying theme of all of these texts is the (potentially tragic) power of women,  the links between women and the gods, the link between women and passion, and the link between passion and disaster.  When the women were passionate: disaster. When the women provoked passion: disaster.  When the gods will is denied:  disaster.

Works Cited:

Racine, Jean. Phèdre. Trans. Ted Hugues. New York: Farrar, Strauss And Giroux, 1998. Print.

Sophocles. Antigone. Trans.  Paul Woodruff. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001. Print.