Phaedra’s love for Hippolytus in Seneca’s Pheadra

Phaedra, is a play by Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca, which recounts the tale of of Phaedra, the queen of Athens, wife of Theseus, and her overwhelming lust for her stepson, Hippolytus. In the view of Greek Mythology and the tragedy Hippolytus by Greek dramatist Euripides, Seneca's Phaedra is one of several aesthetic explorations of this adverse story. Seneca portrays the appellation appearance as alive and absolute in the following of her stepson, while in added iterations of the allegory she is added of an acquiescent victim of fate. This Phaedra takes on the artful attributes and the acrimony generally assigned to the Nurse character.

In this play, we find Hippolytus a very poor young man who spends most of his time hunting and sacrifices to Artemis, goddess of Chastity and Hunting. He is a devout disciple of the goddess Artemis. He has an intense aversion towards women. He does not want to pollute his mind with the thoughts of Love. He is a misogynist. He is ‘stern’ and ‘hates the very name of women’. In the words of Phaedra’s nurse, “he is wild”.

On the other hand, Phaedra is not at all in control of her emotions or her body. She falls in love with her stepson Hippolytus. She does not succeed in controlling herself even though she knows this is wrong. This mad passion is instilled into her mind by Aphrodite, goddess of love; because she is influenced by the goddess Aphrodite. She couldn’t restrain herself. That is why Phaedra told her nurse “passion forces me to take the worser path” [179]. She further complains, “what can reason do? Passion has won and rules supreme, and a mighty god has control over all my soul”[184].

In Act I we find Phaedra complaining against her long loneliness as Theseus, her husband, has gone to the underworld. Loneliness breeds suspicion in her mind for which she believes that Theseus has gone there to seek ‘lust and lawless marriage’. She feels that Pain burns in her ‘like the burning heart of Etna’. She finds joy in nothing. That is why she says, “ malady feeds and grows within my heart, and it burns there hot as the stream that wells from Aetna’s caverns.”

Phaedra explains that she is gripped by a lust, she cannot control. She is a victim of Unrequited love as she says to the nurse, “know no love that is not bount to sin”. At this, the nurse rightly advises Phaedra to banish from her mind the idea of incestuous love. She also warns that Phaedra is on the brink of committing a terrible crime, more sinful in a way than the ‘monstrous passion’ that gripped her mother.

But she misinterprets her relationship with Hippolytus by laying more importance on biology than domestic and social codes. She being not the biological mother of Hyppolytus considers her position as a role playing mother. Therefore, she asks Hippolytus to take his father’s place. Then when Hippolytus calls her mother, she replies, “Mother – that name is too proud and high; a humbler name better suits my feelings. Call me sister, Hippolytus, or slave – yes, slave is better; I will endure servitude.”

Hippolytus gets a jolt when he finds out how Phaedra feels about him. It’s a kind of rude shock for him. He reverses, he respects his stepmother. He says to Phaedra, “Get away! You’re unclean! My body is chaste! ! Let go! Don't touch me!” Hippolytus also says (looking away from her and up to heaven) “O great ruler of the gods, do you hear this crime and do nothing? Do nothing, seeing this? When exactly do you plan to hurl down lightning, then, or use your savage hand, if now the sky is clear? Shatter everything! Let heaven fall! Make clouds grow black and hide the day!”. He considers Phaedra as a ‘monster bearing mother’.

Then, Phaedra and her nurse hatch a plan to conceal Pheadra’s guilt by accusing Hippolytus of attempting to rape his stepmother. And tells Theseus that she has been raped and that the “destroyer of (her) honor” is Hippolytus. Theseus is aghast, and immediately calls on his father, Neptune to kill his son. Then a messenger arrives, bearing news of Hippolytus’ death.

At last, Phaedra overcomes her lustful passion. When she hears the fearful death of Hippolytus, her viciousness turns into remorse. She now faces up to her actions by taking responsibility for Hippolytus’ death, admitting her illicit love and deception to her wronged husband, and finally taking her own life as an act of self punishment.

To conclude, we can say that, like Euripides, Seneca does not present Phaedra as a lewd woman. By nature a good woman, Seneca’s Phaedra declines, because she is a victim of unrequited love whose origins already been mentioned above. In the character of Phaedra, Seneca, the stoic, beautifully dramatizes how passion can lead man towards bestiality and throw him into the pit of hateful damnation.