Week 2 – Phaedra
Civilization 2: Renaissance Through Modern

This is story of pain and tragedy involving the life of Theseus, King of Athens and Phaedra the Queen of Greece. This story follows the time-honored tradition that has plagued man since the beginning of recorded history and will continue with no end in sight far into our future. This is a story of unchecked passion between a man and a woman that has the potential to destroy both of their worlds.

The story begins with Phaedra who is passionately attracted to her stepson Hippolytus. Although there were no blood relation between these two, there is something that is totally unacceptable and unnatural about the way that Phaedra feels about her stepson. This drive is so strong and totally consumes Phaedra. She is helpless and unable to stop these wretched emotions. As the Queen of Greece, there is much she could loose if these passions are found out so she struggles constantly to control these feelings. She is conflicted and she tortures herself because of the guilt she feels about these passions she has for her stepson. The story of Phaedra represents the evil that every human has carried since the beginning.

In this story, Hippolytus has problems of his own; first of all, he has a father that has been an overpowering figure since his son’s birth. His father seems to be larger than life. A great warrior he is also known to be a “heroic womanizer” as he fight both human and non-human enemies (Douglas, et al., 2006, p. 160)

In “The Divine Comedy” written by Dante, St. Augustine and Dido share a relationship that is not unlike Phaedra and Hippolytus. Passion is defined by Webster’s dictionary as the total and intense instance of sexual desire. There may or may not be love involved but the feelings are no less intense. In “The Divine Comedy, St. Augustine struggles daily with what he considers his “corrupt soul”. So much so, that he feels that he can be permanently condemned if he cannot control his unchecked emotions. Phaedra and St. Augustine are fighting the same type of demon and neither of these two can seem to control the passion. Phaedra, like St. Augustine wants to have a closer relationship with God yet these passions eat at her soul cause her more grief than she can handle. She knows that a closer walk with God is not possible as long as she harbors these unnatural feelings for her stepson. It seems to me that authors like Jean Racine and others that wrote during this time always use characters that had major character flaws, always dealing with some dilemma that could tear away the soul. Theseus for example was a great womanizer while being King

She knows that a relationship with God is impossible while she has this unnatural passion for Hippolytus. It seems that during this era of poetry and play writing authors of the time created characters that were always in conflict with some moral dilemma. The characters in most of these plays had character flaws such as Theseus, whose flaw was that he was a great womanizer in addition to being king. There is little in the life of Theseus that he cannot have. He had it all and as King he was able to pursue any passion he may have developed. Unfortunately, most of these characters had disastrous ending of their live usually ending in death by suicide of homicide.

According to the text, page 522, the Enlightenment period began by much of its people question their religious teachings and beliefs. Many of these people were openly critical and showed much skepticism for state authority (Hunt, Martin, Rosenwein, & Smith, 2010, p. 552). A political debate was brewing during this time about absolutism in politics. Other major changes were occurring particularly in the world of science. Notably the challenges that popularized science were bringing to the acceptance and understanding of religion. People began asking questions that the religious leaders found difficult to answer and rationalize. This leads back to the problem with Phaedra and her passion for Hippolytus. These feelings she had were in direct conflict with her religious beliefs. Phaedra knew the difference between right yet she was powerless to resist these feelings for Hippolytus. Phaedra also believed in the general human spirit, a spirit that was good and always able to choose to do the right thing in terms of acceptable behavior. She also believed that if people were given the choice they would always choose to do the right thing and solve problems with rationally instead of through armed conflict.

The author of this story suggest that Phaedra should come out publicly and confess her sins to the world to rid herself of the guilt she is feeling. I completely disagree. Public humiliation, at least in this case could be costly. She could loose all credibility and possibly her seat as Queen of Greece. Also, public confession can hurt those you care deeply about through embarrassment and humiliation that was not cause be the person being hurt. Its best to keep the secret secure and if others are involved, seek forgiveness from only the ones that were impacted by your actions.

It is extremely important that Phaedra maintains her role in society as Queen. If she exposes her wrongdoing, it may be seen as a sigh of weakness. This weakness may be exploited and others could challenge her authority. With our elected leaders today, many of them have lives they would very much like to keep hidden, and for good reason. There is no reason to let political enemies destroy a good leader because of an indiscretion that occurred during one’s youth. I see no real value of these emotions coming from this character. I feel that is distracts from the message of the play, which is that Phaedra was a woman that was very logical. She knew her feelings for Hippolytus were illogical, yet if she manages these emotions carefully enough, no one would ever be wise to her secret. She manages to keep her secrets and the Kingdom of Greece muddles along without any hint of misconduct.

The play ends when Phaedra confesses willingly of her wrongdoing. This confession began a chain of events that would eventually lead to the destruction of all she cared about. This is a tragedy of true proportions because Phaedra is completely incapable of controlling her emotions and then sharing that shortcoming with the world. She; ended up consuming poison brought from Greece by Madea and died (Douglas, et al., 2006)

Works Cited
Douglas, K., Hugo, H. E., James , H., Knox, B. M., MGalliard, J. C., Mack, M., et al. (2006). The Norton Anthology of Western Literature (Vol. 2). New York, New York, USA: W. W. Notron & Company.
Hunt, L., Martin, T. R., Rosenwein, B. H., & Smith, B. G. (2010). The Making of the West - Peoples and Cultures - A Concise History. Boston, MA, USA: Bedfore/St. Martins.