‘No Exit’ in Racine’s Phèdre: The Making of the Anti-Hero

I argue that Sartre used Phèdre as an early prototype when he defined what an anti-hero looked like in Huis clos (No Exit).My study focuses on the conditions that contribute to Sartre’s understanding of what constitutes an anti-hero, and the environment from which he (or she in this case) emerges in Racine’s Phèdre. Sartre suggests that his twentieth-century society, caught up in values he sees as “bourgeois,” is similar to the oppressive court society from which Racine’s anti-hero emerges. I employ both historical and comparative approaches to explore these similar contexts.