Re-Casting the Phaedra Syndrome: Myth and Morality in Timberlake Wertenbaker's The Love of the Nightingale

Re-Casting the Phaedra Syndrome: Myth and Morality in Timberlake Wertenbaker's The Love ofthe Nightingale JOE WINSTON All advances in knowledge are preceded by a "shaq>ened dialogic relationship" among concepts and values, from which new meanings emerge.I In a recently published study, Alben S. Gerard examines what he calls "the Phaedra syndrome" in four major theatrical texts:' Hippo/ytos by Euripides; Phaedra by Seneca; Lope de Vega's EI Castigo sin Venganza; and PhMre by Racine. The subtitle of his book The Phaedra Syndrome: OfShame and Guilt in Drama indicates the nature of the preoccupations of his inquiry; not only is it an analysis which contrasts the way that several imponant playwrights have presented the character of Phaedra but, more interestingly, it is an investigation into how their treatment of her relates to the moral and intellectual climate of their times. The story of Phaedra's incestuous love for her stepson is, he argues, "an archetypal situation of transgression" (2), and his explanation of its persistent fascination as a source for drama is worth quoting in full: In the nutshell of the nuclear family the emergence of a sexual relationship between the husband's son and his stepmother offers a fascinating diversity of subversive trends, especially where the "natural" phallocratic authority of the paterfamilias is sanctioned by public opinion and religious dogma. Such a situation compounds adultery with incest. It brings into play the fundamental psychological motivations of love and honour, sex and vengeance. It exemplifies the utter disruption of natural order and moral hierarchies. It almost inevitably compels author and reader alike to pass moral judgment and to take sides in the contest between natural impulses and ethical precepts." (2) He concludes his essay with some interesting observations on postwar treatments of the Phaedra syndrome, which he sees as having resurfaced in films such as Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night (1956), Louis Malle's Modern Drama, 38(1995) 510 Re-Casting the Phaedra Syndrome 511 Le Souffle au Coeur (1971), and Bernardo Bertolucci's La Luna (1979)."What characterises these treatments is their lack of moral outrage and even cheerful violation of one of the ultimate social taboos, direct mother-son incest. Such a "trivialisation of sex in art" he sees as the "spawn" of "postwar pennissive society, one of whose most conspicuous characteristics is the liberation of sex from ethical considerations," and he doubts whether the Phaedra syndrome can be regarded as a relevant topic for serious aesthetic treatment in contemporary society (134). Gerard is no doubt right to speculate that Phaedra's agony of sexual guilt does not speak directly to the preoccupations of a contemporary audience, but his diatribe against western society's "so-called 'liberalism' and hedonistic laxity" is critically unhelpful (135). Issues of sex and ethics remain very much at the heart of contemporary moral concern, but there are now competing philosophical frames of experience through which they are viewed. In particular , feminism has challenged the very phaHocratic authority within which the Phaedra myth is firmly rooted. Whereas a stepmother's lust for her stepson may formerly have proved to be powerfully symbolic of a threat to the moral and social order, from a feminist perspective this order is one defined and described by men. This is particularly significant when the themes explored sex , shame, and guilt - are represented within the person of a female. In fact, Phaedra is one of many "guilty" stepmothers within the western cultura.l tradition , stretching from Pharaoh's wife in Genesis to the Queen in Disney's Snow White. As a part of this male discourse, the Phaedra syndrome can be seen as one of a number of potent cultural myths embodying hidden attitudes and values with regard to male and female sexuality which need to be exposed and challenged, for they distort social reality at the same time as they help shape social assumptions. Enshrined as it is within major works of western theatre, the myth may be muted in our times, but it is by no means silent. In this article, I wish to suggest that such a challenge has, in fact, been raised in Timberlake Wertenbaker's play The...