Mini-Review: "Phaedra"

Laura Shepperson's new novel provides a bracing and brutal look at one of antiquity's most potent, and disturbing, myths.

I’ve long been fascinated by the story of Phaedra, ever since I read Euripides’ tragic play Hippolytus as an undergraduate. Even though the play is supposedly about Hippolytus and his tragic fate–which stems from his stepmother’s accusation of rape and his father Theseus’ subsequent curse on him–it’s very clear where the playwright’s true sympathies lay. Nevertheless, Phaedra has become synonymous in the minds of many with women’s duplicity and false accusations of sexual assault and rape. 

Which brings us to Phaedra, the new novel from Laura Shepperson. As the title suggests, this book focuses on the title character, who begins as a royal daughter of Crete before becoming a pawn in the power games of her father and, later, Theseus. From the minute she arrives in Athens Phaedra finds herself subjected to the sinister men who inhabit, which reaches its unfortunate culmination when she is in fact raped by Hippolytus, who is subsequently put on trial for the crime. 

There is a searing power to Shepperson’s prose, as she immerses us in the beautiful yet brutal world of ancient Crete and Athens. Though quite young when the novel begins, it isn’t long before she finds herself repeatedly tested. In Shepperson’s telling, however, Phaedra is far from a victim. She is a young woman determined not just to tell her own story but also to reclaim what agency she can and, in contrast to most mythic tellings, she is the one who brings about Hippolytus’ death, becoming her own avenging angel of death before taking her own life and sparing her unborn child the ugly reality of living in such a fallen world. 

]As powerful as Phaedra’s voice is, however, she is matched by the group of women she refers to as the “Night Chorus,” whose caustic and blunt ruminations on the ugliness within Theseus’ court. What’s more, these interludes make it clear that, as so often in patriarchy, women often turn against one another rather than against their oppressors. They are joined likewise by others, including a cynical politician who sees Phaedra’s plight as a chance to pursue his own vengeance against Theseus, one of her handmaidens and, most fascinatingly of all, Medea, whose own tragic fate prefigured that of Phaedra (to whom she is related). 

For far too long, the women of antiquity have been relegated to the sidelines, their perspectives shunted aside in favor of the great men of mythology. Fortunately, we seem to be living in something of a golden age for mythological retellings, in which women are put back in the spotlight where they belong. Though Phaedra makes for difficult reading at times, this is, I think a good thing, as it viscerally reminds us of just how much violence (particularly sexual violence) has always been at the heart of western culture’s most powerful and prominent myths. It’s to Shepperson’s credit that she gives modern readers a Phaedra who is more than capable of wresting her destiny away from others, even if doing so leads to her own demise. It may not be a happy ending, but it’s nevertheless one that rings true to the spirit of tragedy.