Racine's Racists

CRITICISM RACINE'S RACISTS Ronald W. ??ß?? In using the term "racism" with respect to Racine, I have no intention of claiming that either Racine or his characters believe that physical traits reveal mental insufficiencies and that one generic group can thus be proved superior to another. I am not referring, therefore, to biological racism, or the "myth of racism" as Ashley Montagu calls it,1 but to a kind of sentimental racism which informs the attitudes of Racine's characters toward one another. Technically, racism consists in rigid emotional prejudice against a human group; I will use it, however, to define the views of one individual toward another with the goal of proposing an analogy between racism and certain reactions of Racine's people. In addition to furnishing a new vantage point from which to view one play, the Andromaque, and perhaps other plays of Racine, this approach might serve as a practical pedagogical tool for teaching Racine at an intermediate level where one cannot assume a background of literary history in the students. Basically what interests me in this whole question of racism is the motivation for it and the attitudes it engenders in both the racist and the object of bis predjudice. What are the conditions that produce prejudice? One finds most often that cultural, familial, and social conditions are responsible, and that a sense of inferiority, of being threatened, and of needing reassurance derives from such conditions. Judd Hubert has written: Le protagoniste racinien ... a conscience Ie plus souvent d'une certaine inf ériorité, et tout con effort consiste, non pas à découvir ou à affirmer envers et contre tous son individualité héroïque, mais à tricher, soit en masquant à ses propres yeux cette infériorité, soit en tâchant de changer d'identité.2 The cases of Oreste, Hermione, and Pyrrhus are illustrative of this particular sentiment. Let us begin with Oreste. Basically, Oreste is forever striving to bridge a "generation gap:" he is not old enough to participate in the Trojan War in which his elders gained fame and immortality. He has spent his time pursuing a dream whose concrete form has become Hermione. If only she, the daughter of Helen for whom the whole war was fought, would recognize him as a worthy rival of the men who fought and died at Troy—or at the very least, if she would give him the opportunity to prove himself—then he would no longer be the "déplorable Oreste" but would join the ranks of the Greek heroes. Hermione has a similar problem of family conditions, perhaps one should say even of "family conditioning." Throughout the play she manifests a fundaban « Most Dangerous Myth (Cleveland: World Publishing Ck)., 1964), p. 24. 2BsSOi a" exégèse raciñenne (Paris: Nizet, 1956), p. 77. 35 36RMMLA BulletinJune 1972 mental desire to attain that status which, her legendary mother Helen had possessed. At one point (IV, 3), Oreste makes explicit the goals of both Hermione and himself: "Prenons, en signalant mon bras et votre nom,/Vous, la place d'Hélène, et moi, d'Agamemnon."3 Given the social circumstances, there happens to be only one person through whom Hermione can obtain what she seeks: Pyrrhus. She constantly fixes her gaze on the king of Epirus, thus frustrating Oreste's ambitions. To speak of ambitions means to speak of Pyrrhus, for he aims high. At one and the same time, he must strive to equal both his illustrious father, Achilles, and his glorious rival, Hector. He cannot succeed, of course, since both figures have become, if anything, even more idealized and heroic after their deaths; they have far outdistanced the struggling Pyrrhus. The young man's sense of impotence is frequently intensified by Andromaque whose possession would be tantamount, in his eyes, to a victory over Hector. She repeatedly throws the name and the image of Hector in Pyrrhus' face in order to bring him up short. Pyrrhus, for example, exclaims to Phoenix: Tu l'as vu, comme elle m'a traité. Je pensais, en voyant sa tendresse alarmée, Que son fils me la dût renvoyer désarmée. J'allais voir le succès...