Page:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1896) v2.djvu/51

chivalry, the martyred saints, the chaste and holy virgins of romance—nay more, with the true wives, the devoted mothers, of our own day."^[1]

But there are female characters in his plays which have been pointed to as proving a very different attitude towards women. Of these, Phædra was the best-abused by his enemies, who wilfully shut their eyes to her true character. She is, by the very plot of the play, the helpless victim of the malice of a Goddess. With her brain beclouded by fever-frenzy, she agonizes for clear vision and wails for peace of mind. She is a pure-souled, true-hearted woman, who tingles with shame and shudders with horror at the hideous thing that has been born in her. She is driven by the imminence of ruin to a desperate expedient to shield her name from the unmerited dishonour which she might well believe, from the ambiguously-worded threat with which Hippolytus departed, was to be cast upon her. He gave her cause to think^[2] that he would accuse her to his father of a crime of which she knew herself innocent. In her despair, she saw no help but to forestall him by an accusation equally false.

Medea and Kreusa,—even Klytemnestra and Hermionê,—are not portrayed as transgressors without excuse: in each case the audience heard the woman plead her cause and proclaim the doctrine that woman has rights as well as man, that what man avenges as the inexpiable wrong is not a light offence against her. It may well be that they were not ripe for the reception of ideas so unheard of, that many of them mistook his drift; but the seed sank in, to bear fruit in due time.

In each instance the sinner is a woman deeply wronged,