acitated bystander rather than a ruthless, malicious offender. By reducing her offence to that of allowing Oenone to act, Racine gave the opportunity to pity Phedre because she was not directly guilty for Hippolytus’ death. Doing this enables the audience to look at her internal agony rather than pass over it because they are repulsed by her actions. He changed Hippolytus’ character so that he was actually in love for the first time with Aricia, rather than feeling nothing for any woman, so the whole element of female jealousy was introduced. By changing the story in these ways Racine shifts the characters that the audience feels pity for and makes the play easier to relate to. At the end of the play, the audience feels sympathy for Hippolytus because he is the innocent victim of both a mother’s improper lust and a father’s quick-tempered stubbornness. For Phedre the audience feels sympathy for her dilemma; the fact that this all started because of Aphrodite’s curse that was not her fault, and the fact that she was tormented by a love that could never be. They do not, however, pardon her actions, or lack thereof, that are a result of those feelings. For Aricia the audience feels happy that she got her kingdom back, but they feel bad that she got pulled into all of this. She is very much the innocent bystander in all of this, along with Hippolytus. The two of them make up the tragic heroes who suffer because of the circumstances they are surrounded by, but not by any fault of their own. The audience feels little or no sympathy for Theseus due to the fact that he is portrayed as a man with loose morals who makes judgments too quickly. Racine’s Phedre is a tragedy that sticks very closely to the Greek definition of what makes up a good tragedy. It takes place in one day, the plot is singular, people from a high status quickly fall because of some flaw, the fates are directly involved in the ...
