Phaedra

Phaedra is a complex character. Throughout the play, she oscillates between reason and passion. One the one hand, she is a conscientious woman who prizes her good reputation. On the other, she is prone to giving way to her destructive passions. In the first act, she is able to analyze her feelings dispassionately and clearly understands that they are inappropriate. By the second act, however, she collapses into a state of physical and mental exhaustion, becoming “listless” so that “sometimes her feet give way, she faints, seems dead, / Her neck flops down, her head can scarcely stay upright” (367-68).

Instead of finding a way to control her passions, Phaedra’s analysis of her feelings leads her to the problematic conclusion that she cannot control herself, and that what she is suffering is her fate or a punishment from the gods (and who can resist the gods?). Dismissing the Nurse’s insistence that Phaedra can reason her way out of her suffering, she proclaims: “What can reason do? Passion, passion rules” (184). Some critics have even interpreted Phaedra’s rejection of ethical values as leading to her lethargy.

Significantly, Phaedra never completely loses her desire for a good reputation. And at the end of the play, her confession of the truth to Theseus—however late—supplies her with another burst of moral energy—precisely the burst she needs to end her life and salvage a bit, however small, of her tarnished reputation.