Phaedra

The second act begins with the Nurse’s highly-detailed account of the lovesick Phaedra’s symptoms. Phaedra has become “pleased with nothing, listless” (365), in marked contrast with the heightened energy she displayed in the first act. Phaedra seems almost like a different person. Critics have debated whether her sudden change represents clumsy playwriting or whether we are shown two aspects of a single person. Perhaps it is Phaedra’s abandonment of her moral principles and her reputation that has sapped her energy.

Phaedra continues to navigate the gray area between reason and madness—only now, it seems that madness is gaining ground. When Phaedra speaks, she makes a show of throwing off her carefully-arranged jewelry so that she can “Let loose my hair to pour down my neck / and over the tops of my shoulders […]”and roam the woods (394-95). In other words, Phaedra has abandoned order and her social status for the chaos of nature.

Mankind’s relationship to nature continues to inform the second act of the play, with every character having a different relationship with the natural world. For Hippolytus, nature represents freedom. For Phaedra, nature remains predominantly hostile. Even when Phaedra speaks of fleeing into the woods, she cannot help but conflate the natural world with the warlike Amazons. For the Nurse, nature is tyrannical. As the Nurse tells Hippolytus: “God’s rules tell what is proper at each stage of life” (452), governing the world with an iron first. Venus, “who restocks and restores the losses of our race” (470), rules nature.

The rhetorical debate between the Nurse and Hippolytus illustrates the contrast between the Nurse’s hedonism and Hippolytus’s ascetism. The Nurse’s argument that Hippolytus should indulge in the carnal pleasures of love is based on her tyrannical view of nature, to which all living things must submit. Hippolytus’s rebuttal, in praising the freedom and purity of a simple life spent in the woods, is almost successful on Stoic grounds. Hippolytus speaks highly of “the ways of old” and rejects “anger, lust, and greed” in favor of a simple life defined by self-control (484, 486).

However, Hippolytus also suffers from his irrational biases, the most flagrant being his rampant misogyny. Through him, the play explores The Conflict of the Sexes. Hippolytus blames all the evils of civilization on women, declaring that “Woman is the root of all evil” (559). It gradually becomes clear that this misogyny, rather than any Stoic pursuit of reason or emotional self-control, motivates Hippolytus’s chastity. Hippolytus is no more rational than Phaedra.

When Phaedra finally makes her advances on Hippolytus, the theme of hereditary guilt and The Interplay of Heredity and Fate again comes to the fore. Phaedra compares Hippolytus to a younger Theseus and asks him to take his place—in every sense. Hippolytus tells Phaedra that she has “dared an evil worse than your mother’s” (688), echoing Phaedra’s own fears from the previous act.

The confrontation between Phaedra and Hippolytus also explores the theme of the erotic and its relationship with death. Phaedra, whose desperate lust for Hippolytus represents a departure from her own nature, feels an almost erotic thrill at the idea of being killed by Hippolytus. The idea of dying would also allow Phaedra to maintain her reputation: “This is better than I hoped for, that I should die at your hands, and keep my purity” (711-12). Though Phaedra has ostensibly taken the Nurse’s advice in rejecting her pursuit of a good reputation, she will go to great lengths to maintain her reputation after all—even if it means accusing Hippolytus of rape.