Phaedras Individuality in Tartuffe Essay - 1179 Words

â€Å"I have revealed enough. Spare me the rest. / I die, and my grim secret dies with me.† (Racine 193) Phaedra has a huge secret: she is in love with her stepson, Hippolytus. She has reoccurring thoughts of suicide, and a desire for this burden to be lifted. Her forbidden passion has a gigantic affect on her mental capability and her ability to be independent. She does not want anyone to know about her repugnant desires for Hippolytus and her mental health slowly begins to weaken as she maintains this information to herself. As we look closer into the life of Phaedra, we find she exhibits a lustful, weak-minded, guilty, gullible, and reliant personality. Phaedra has a very lustful personality. She lusts over her stepson and cannot†¦show more content†¦I found him mirrored in his father’s face! / Against myself at last I dared revolt. I spurred my feelings on to harass him. / To banish my adored enemy, / I feigned a spite against this stepson, kept / Ur ging his exile, and my ceaseless cries / Wrested him from a father’s loving arms. / I breathed more freely since I knew him gone. / The days flowed by, untroubled, innocent. / Faithful to Theseus, hiding my distress. (Racine 195) This makes Phaedra seem even more weak-minded, pulling up the fact that she cannot stand even being in the same room without fear she might show everyone how she truly feels. Phaedra resolves to die, being weak-minded and sees this as an escape of her current melancholy. â€Å"Worn down by the guilt of this passion and the division it creates within her, she resolves to die.† (Critchley 18) Phaedra wants to end this pain and guilt of her loving Hippolytus by killing herself. The only problem is she cannot die because she is a requirement of Aphrodite’s plan to cause pain for Hippolytus. (Lattimore 7) Phaedra wishes she could be put out of her misery and her mental pain being caused by this lustfulness. She cannot take this pain much longer. â€Å"I faint, I fall; my strength abandons me. / My eyes are dazzled by the daylight’s glare, / And my knees, trembling, give beneath my weight.† (Racine 191) Her physical stature begins to suffer because of he r lustful nature and her weak-mind. By banishing Hippolytus, Phaedra’s mind only begins