Phèdre

The first two Acts introduce the tangled triangles of Forbidden Love and Desire that lie at the heart of the play. Phaedra (Phèdre in the original French) is in love with her stepson Hippolytus, the son of her husband Theseus from a previous affair with the Amazon Antiope. Thus far Racine adheres closely to the outline of the ancient Greek myth; however, Hippolytus’s love for Aricia is an innovation not found in any ancient source (See: Background).

Phaedra’s love for Hippolytus and Hippolytus’s love for Aricia are forbidden, though in different ways: Phaedra’s love is adulterous and even somewhat incestuous, a betrayal of Phaedra’s marriage to Hippolytus’s father Theseus; Hippolytus’s love for Aricia, on the other hand, is forbidden because it violates Theseus’s harsh law that Aricia, a political enemy, must remain celibate and unmarried. Whereas Phaedra’s forbidden love is dishonorable and potentially damaging to Phaedra’s reputation, Hippolytus’s love is ennobling, showing that he can be less cruel and more understanding than his father. Moreover, Phaedra’s love for Hippolytus is unrequited, while Aricia and Hippolytus evidently return each other’s love.

The theme of Forbidden Love and Desire branches out into the other themes of the play, namely, The Relationship Between Heredity and Fate and The Importance of Honor and Duty. Just as both Phaedra and Hippolytus find themselves in the grips of forbidden love, both Phaedra and Hippolytus are deeply influenced by ideas of family, fate, and honor and duty. Voicing his intention to leave in search of his father at the beginning of the play, Hippolytus explains that he must “blush at [his] own sloth” (179) at not leaving earlier, adding that in leaving now he is finally doing his “duty” (179). Hippolytus also worries that he falls short when compared to his father and his legacy, lamenting that he has “slain / No monsters yet” (181) when his father at his age had already achieved famous heroic exploits.

Phaedra, similarly, is troubled by her love for Hippolytus because this love is dishonorable and threatens the stability of familial ties. She longs to die “to rescue [her] good name” (187), and after confessing her love to Hippolytus, asks him to help her “expiate” (198) her dishonor by killing her with his sword. Phaedra also feels a strong sense of responsibility for her young son, whose rights as a legitimate heir presumptive she clearly cares about. Indeed, it is Phaedra’s “love for a son” that manages to “reanimate the rest of [her] weak spirits” (189) at the end of Act I, as she attempts to fulfill her role as a mother in the midst of her temptations as a wife.

Family thus instills in the characters of the play a sense of honor and duty, but this is not the only role that the idea of family plays. Throughout the play, fate is closely tied to The Relationship Between Heredity and Fate: One’s fate, in other words, is decided by the actions and sins of one’s predecessors. Hippolytus, by his very chastity, must pay for the promiscuity and infidelity of his father Theseus; Aricia is sentenced to a life of celibacy because of the treasonous actions of her father and brothers. It is Phaedra, in particular, who is depicted as a “victim” of hereditary fate. When she first comes on stage, Phaedra invokes the sun as the “Author of my sad race, thou of whom my mother / Boasted herself the daughter” (183), and later she speaks of the “hate of Venus and her fatal wrath” (186) and refers to herself as the “Hapless victim of / Celestial vengeance” (198). These lines are all allusions to the tradition that Phaedra’s ancestors, descendants of the sun god Helios, had been cursed by the love goddess Venus (or Aphrodite, in Greek versions) to be consumed by inappropriate love and desire. This, in Phaedra’s view, is the reason she loves Hippolytus, and why she cannot hope to control or suppress this love.

For the royal house of Athens, this family drama also plays out as a political drama. The rumor that Theseus is dead gives rise to several factions, with some supporting Hippolytus, others Phaedra’s son, and others Aricia. Politics are as important a motivation for the characters of the play as anything else: Indeed, it is in no small part for the rights of her young son that Phaedra decides to stay alive and to try to approach Hippolytus. Aricia, understandably, longs to escape her imprisoned state. Meanwhile Hippolytus, always the image of nobility, wishes only to find a suitable ruler, “Whatever the cost” (199).