a mere housewife
Not your cup of tea
Just for reference if it is useful to anyone -- I loved these plays, and wrote a book report on them. (The discussion yesterday reminded me how much I liked them.)
Unhappily Ever After: Faithfulness in two plays of Euripides
“Our human life I think and have thought a shadow,
And I do not fear to say that those who are held
Wise amongst men and who search the reasons of things
Are those who bring the most sorrow on themselves.
For of mortals there is no one who is happy.
If wealth flows in upon one, one may be perhaps
Luckier than one’s neighbor, but still not happy.”
So says the messenger in Medea, bringing news of the destruction of Jason’s second bride and her father Kreon. Medea stands there, an embodiment of bitterness, revenge, and hatred. But she would not be a true shape of evil if she were not also an embodiment of woman’s love: it is Medea, not Jason, in this story who is faithful.
When the story opens Medea is in torment because Jason has taken a second bride and betrayed her, after she betrayed everything else for him. She has ‘left all, and followed him’; and he has loved her and left her alone. Our sympathies are almost entirely with Medea — almost entirely, because we remember that her love has already showed itself to be a force of evil: she has been a treacherous daughter for love of Jason. As the story progresses, so does this force of evil: until we recognize it as hatred — hatred as strong as death: willing to suffer anything, if only one can make the hated one suffer too. Unfortunately, women are helpless; even the poets who could tell of their grievances are men. But Medea will not content herself with helplessly having been in the right. She refuses to become a victim to virtue. She will not allow herself to be mocked. If the good are taken advantage of, then she’ll be better than everyone else at being bad. She was a treacherous daughter for Jason’s sake: she will be a treacherous mother for his sake, too.
The gods are prayed to stay her hand in vain, as she slaughters her children: the gods can be counted on for very little, and what can be known of them makes everything else uncertain except unhappiness. As Medea knows, if one wants justice, one must take matters into one’s own hands. But Medea in her own cause has become the injustice. It is a shock to see her, rising above the chaos of her crimes, terribly wounded, drawn by dragons: the arch-nemesis of all that is selfless in a woman’s love; and realize that she has risen to this height on the wings of love. She has turned faithfulness into a force of destruction. The end of such a story can only be an almost comically dry observation on the inscrutability of the gods:
“Zeus in Olympus is the overseer
Of many doings. Many things the gods
Achieve beyond our judgment. What we thought
Is not confirmed and what we thought not God
Contrives. And so it happens in this story.”
Perhaps as the nurse in ‘Hippolytus’ says, it would be better to love less, to
‘ . . . join with each other
in loving feelings that are not excessive,
just on the surface, not touching the quick of the soul.
Light should the heart’s affection lie on us,
quick to cast off and quick to pull tighter.
This is a heavy weight, that one soul
should suffer itself for two souls . . . ‘
The women in ‘Hippolytus’ are faithful, too: but so are the the men. This works out to a tragedy only more inescapable, bearing down in all the terrible machinery of unbroken promises. Even the gods keep their promises this time; so deliverance is looked for in vain.
Hippolytus, in his (ironically rather sexual) devotion to the virgin goddess, slights Cypris goddess of love. Cypris, a divine figurehead of human passion, determines to have her revenge; and from there it is a screwball tragedy of kept promises that result in the loss of everyone’s life, honor, and happiness — minor casualties Cypris had always planned to sustain, in her special purpose of destroying Hippolytus.
In the great dénouement, Theseus arrives home to find that his wife has killed herself with an explanatory note that Hippolytus violated her. She has sealed her accusation with her life — what stronger evidence could anyone give? — and Hippolytus is sworn to secrecy as to his defense. The chorus see all that is happening; but Phaedra has sworn them to secrecy: all the players are bound in the oath of their parts, as in chains. At length Theseus calls down one of three curses he has been granted, against his own son.
Line by line, the faithfulness of all these various forces compounds to certain destruction. If Phaedra were not so concerned about constancy to Theseus, she would not be so wounded by Hippolytus’ words. If Hippolytus were not so righteous about his oaths, he would not speak so hurtfully on one point, and keep silence on another. If the nurse were not so devoted, she would not have done what is wrong. If Phaedra’s husband were not so devoted, he would not call down a curse on his son. And then — if only the chorus would not keep their promise to Phaedra! If only Poseidon would take into consideration Theseus’ ignorance, and not keep his word! If only Artemis would intervene! But as she explains when she does show up and do something — too little, too late:
“there is this rule among the gods, –
that none of us will check another god’s desire
when it is shown. Instead we always stand aside.
Be sure that if I did not fear the power of Zeus
I never would have sunk to such a depth of shame
as to allow the death of him who is to me
dearest of men.”
If only Artemis weren’t so damningly god fearing.
Yet the gods are not always faithful: the nurse argues from their infidelity as from an axiom: ‘your father then should have made you on special terms, or else controlled by other gods, if you will not consent to follow these known laws [of the gods' faithlessness].’
And this certainty of infidelity creates others: evil, suffering, ignorance, darkness.
“The life of men is nothing but evil,
nor is there any respite from suffering.
Yet if there is a state better than living,
darkness surrounds it and hides it in clouds.
So we show ourselves lovesick indeed
for this something that glitters on earth,
having no knowledge of different living
and no revelation of what is beneath,
since there’s no direction in idle legends.”
So the chorus, in one of the most telling passages I have read, opens with praising the gods, and closes with indicting them for unrighteousness.
‘Greatly indeed it will ease me of grief, when it comes to my mind,
the thought of the gods.
Yet, though guessing in hope at their wisdom,
I am downcast again when I look at the fortunes and actions of mortals.’
to:
‘My anger falls on the gods.
Alas, you band of the Graces,
why have you sent him away
from this house, from his native land,
he, quite without guilt in this evil?’
This makes quite a contrast from ‘choruses’ of the Old Testament: the Psalms often open in complaints while considering man’s fortunes and actions, but move to a consideration of the faithfulness of God and almost universally close in praise.
Indeed, years later, the literary traditions of a Christian country would produce a moralist like Jane Austen, whose heroines toil through long uncertainties with unflagging virtue that is inevitably rewarded. Their very ‘helplessness’ is a force by which they triumph. Good things happen to good people (bad people even become good); and they all live happily ever after. These are ‘known laws’ of the Christian world, because we have a revelation, because our hero instead of returning evil for evil, forgave us: because our God keeps His Word in love as well as in war.
There is forgiveness in the final lines of ‘Hippolytus’, but it is a powerless force: a weak cough in the whirlwind of death. It is extended to one who was all along really innocent, just deceived by those finagling gods. It reverses nothing. Artemis cannot see death, and so must abandon her favorite to destruction. She does promise before she goes to revenge herself on Cypris’ favorite — so even outside the perimeter of the perfect circle, we understand that sin will faithfully bear down on some other innocent.
Apparently Medea was not only the antitheses of selflessness in her methods, but a supreme imitator of the divine.
Unhappily Ever After: Faithfulness in two plays of Euripides
“Our human life I think and have thought a shadow,
And I do not fear to say that those who are held
Wise amongst men and who search the reasons of things
Are those who bring the most sorrow on themselves.
For of mortals there is no one who is happy.
If wealth flows in upon one, one may be perhaps
Luckier than one’s neighbor, but still not happy.”
So says the messenger in Medea, bringing news of the destruction of Jason’s second bride and her father Kreon. Medea stands there, an embodiment of bitterness, revenge, and hatred. But she would not be a true shape of evil if she were not also an embodiment of woman’s love: it is Medea, not Jason, in this story who is faithful.
When the story opens Medea is in torment because Jason has taken a second bride and betrayed her, after she betrayed everything else for him. She has ‘left all, and followed him’; and he has loved her and left her alone. Our sympathies are almost entirely with Medea — almost entirely, because we remember that her love has already showed itself to be a force of evil: she has been a treacherous daughter for love of Jason. As the story progresses, so does this force of evil: until we recognize it as hatred — hatred as strong as death: willing to suffer anything, if only one can make the hated one suffer too. Unfortunately, women are helpless; even the poets who could tell of their grievances are men. But Medea will not content herself with helplessly having been in the right. She refuses to become a victim to virtue. She will not allow herself to be mocked. If the good are taken advantage of, then she’ll be better than everyone else at being bad. She was a treacherous daughter for Jason’s sake: she will be a treacherous mother for his sake, too.
The gods are prayed to stay her hand in vain, as she slaughters her children: the gods can be counted on for very little, and what can be known of them makes everything else uncertain except unhappiness. As Medea knows, if one wants justice, one must take matters into one’s own hands. But Medea in her own cause has become the injustice. It is a shock to see her, rising above the chaos of her crimes, terribly wounded, drawn by dragons: the arch-nemesis of all that is selfless in a woman’s love; and realize that she has risen to this height on the wings of love. She has turned faithfulness into a force of destruction. The end of such a story can only be an almost comically dry observation on the inscrutability of the gods:
“Zeus in Olympus is the overseer
Of many doings. Many things the gods
Achieve beyond our judgment. What we thought
Is not confirmed and what we thought not God
Contrives. And so it happens in this story.”
Perhaps as the nurse in ‘Hippolytus’ says, it would be better to love less, to
‘ . . . join with each other
in loving feelings that are not excessive,
just on the surface, not touching the quick of the soul.
Light should the heart’s affection lie on us,
quick to cast off and quick to pull tighter.
This is a heavy weight, that one soul
should suffer itself for two souls . . . ‘
The women in ‘Hippolytus’ are faithful, too: but so are the the men. This works out to a tragedy only more inescapable, bearing down in all the terrible machinery of unbroken promises. Even the gods keep their promises this time; so deliverance is looked for in vain.
Hippolytus, in his (ironically rather sexual) devotion to the virgin goddess, slights Cypris goddess of love. Cypris, a divine figurehead of human passion, determines to have her revenge; and from there it is a screwball tragedy of kept promises that result in the loss of everyone’s life, honor, and happiness — minor casualties Cypris had always planned to sustain, in her special purpose of destroying Hippolytus.
In the great dénouement, Theseus arrives home to find that his wife has killed herself with an explanatory note that Hippolytus violated her. She has sealed her accusation with her life — what stronger evidence could anyone give? — and Hippolytus is sworn to secrecy as to his defense. The chorus see all that is happening; but Phaedra has sworn them to secrecy: all the players are bound in the oath of their parts, as in chains. At length Theseus calls down one of three curses he has been granted, against his own son.
Line by line, the faithfulness of all these various forces compounds to certain destruction. If Phaedra were not so concerned about constancy to Theseus, she would not be so wounded by Hippolytus’ words. If Hippolytus were not so righteous about his oaths, he would not speak so hurtfully on one point, and keep silence on another. If the nurse were not so devoted, she would not have done what is wrong. If Phaedra’s husband were not so devoted, he would not call down a curse on his son. And then — if only the chorus would not keep their promise to Phaedra! If only Poseidon would take into consideration Theseus’ ignorance, and not keep his word! If only Artemis would intervene! But as she explains when she does show up and do something — too little, too late:
“there is this rule among the gods, –
that none of us will check another god’s desire
when it is shown. Instead we always stand aside.
Be sure that if I did not fear the power of Zeus
I never would have sunk to such a depth of shame
as to allow the death of him who is to me
dearest of men.”
If only Artemis weren’t so damningly god fearing.
Yet the gods are not always faithful: the nurse argues from their infidelity as from an axiom: ‘your father then should have made you on special terms, or else controlled by other gods, if you will not consent to follow these known laws [of the gods' faithlessness].’
And this certainty of infidelity creates others: evil, suffering, ignorance, darkness.
“The life of men is nothing but evil,
nor is there any respite from suffering.
Yet if there is a state better than living,
darkness surrounds it and hides it in clouds.
So we show ourselves lovesick indeed
for this something that glitters on earth,
having no knowledge of different living
and no revelation of what is beneath,
since there’s no direction in idle legends.”
So the chorus, in one of the most telling passages I have read, opens with praising the gods, and closes with indicting them for unrighteousness.
‘Greatly indeed it will ease me of grief, when it comes to my mind,
the thought of the gods.
Yet, though guessing in hope at their wisdom,
I am downcast again when I look at the fortunes and actions of mortals.’
to:
‘My anger falls on the gods.
Alas, you band of the Graces,
why have you sent him away
from this house, from his native land,
he, quite without guilt in this evil?’
This makes quite a contrast from ‘choruses’ of the Old Testament: the Psalms often open in complaints while considering man’s fortunes and actions, but move to a consideration of the faithfulness of God and almost universally close in praise.
Indeed, years later, the literary traditions of a Christian country would produce a moralist like Jane Austen, whose heroines toil through long uncertainties with unflagging virtue that is inevitably rewarded. Their very ‘helplessness’ is a force by which they triumph. Good things happen to good people (bad people even become good); and they all live happily ever after. These are ‘known laws’ of the Christian world, because we have a revelation, because our hero instead of returning evil for evil, forgave us: because our God keeps His Word in love as well as in war.
There is forgiveness in the final lines of ‘Hippolytus’, but it is a powerless force: a weak cough in the whirlwind of death. It is extended to one who was all along really innocent, just deceived by those finagling gods. It reverses nothing. Artemis cannot see death, and so must abandon her favorite to destruction. She does promise before she goes to revenge herself on Cypris’ favorite — so even outside the perimeter of the perfect circle, we understand that sin will faithfully bear down on some other innocent.
Apparently Medea was not only the antitheses of selflessness in her methods, but a supreme imitator of the divine.
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