My gender is insulted by Sophocles’ “The Women of Trachis”
The central mistake made by the female protagonist in “The Women of Trachis” makes our entire gender look bad. Deianira mistakenly kills her husband and then commits suicide because she took a love potion from a dying centaur who was murdered by her husband for trying to rape her. The remarkable part of her mistake is that it went unremarked by the chorus. At no point in this whole tragedy is the sheer lunacy of taking a love potion from one’s attempted rapist pointed out. The whole reading left me feeling outraged by the complacent acceptance of female mental inferiority that pervaded ancient Greece – and I have already read The Odyssey and been reminded over and over again that the perfect wife waits meekly crying at home while her husband gallivants with a sexy nymph.
Deianira was not a notably stupid person. Her good sense seems to be emphasized for most of the play. She chastely awaits the return of her husband, reacts graciously when presented with her husband’s mistress, and cares for her family. In terms of the competence expected of women during that time period, nothing seems to be lacking. So why is her mistake taken in stride?
The play begins at the end of a patient wait for her husband Heracles (think Greek Hercules) to return home. This particular year of waiting – she had many – was critical to their future because a prophecy predicted that EITHER Heracles would come home and enjoy a peaceful life OR he would die. Deianira is deeply in love with her penultimate mythic hero hubby and fervently hopes for a long peaceful life together with their children.
Heracles sends the spoils of war ahead of him as he intends to give sacrifices to the gods. Included in the spoils are maidservants from the newly sacked city of Oechalia. Deianara welcomes the women honorably, promises fair treatment, and is struck by the radiant beauty of one girl of obviously noble birth.
A servant takes Deianara aside and explains that the fetching maidservant is the princess of Oechalia and was Heracles motive for destroying the city. He is hopelessly besotted and plans to frolic with her in the house he shares with his wife.
All things considered, Deianira handles this news like a champion of sense:
“Speak, and you will find that I am not a spiteful woman
Nor one who does not know how it is with man—
We cannot always enjoy a constant happiness.”
Further emphasizing her tact and grace, she sends a robe to Heracles that she lovingly created for his return and offers heartfelt words of welcome. It is with the execution of this gift that she makes her mistake. A long time ago, a centaur was helping her ford a river when he got a little…”handsy”. Heracles shot him with a special arrow tipped with the eternal poison of the Hydra.
In the words of Deianara:
“I have had hidden in a copper urn
For many years the gift of a centaur, long ago
While I was still a child, I took it from the wounds
Of the hairy-chested Nessus as he lay dying
He used to ferry people, for a fee, across
the deep flood of the Evenus, in his arms
with no oars to drive him over nor ships’ sails.
I too was carried on his shoulders when my father
sent me to follow Heracles for the first time
as his wife. When I was halfway across
his hands touched me lustfully. I cried out and at once
the son of Zeus turned around, raised his hands,
and shot a feathered arrow through his chest; into
his lungs it hissed. The beast spoke his last words to me
as he died, “Daughter of old Oeneus,
if you listen to me, you shall have great profit
from my ferrying, since you are the last I have brought across.
If you take in your hands this blood, clotted in
my wounds, wherever it is black with the bile
of the Hydra, the monstrous serpent of Lerna, in which
he dipped his arrows, you will have a charm over
the heart of Heracles, so he will never look
at another woman and love her more than you.”…
I followed all the instructions he gave me while he still lived
And dipped this robe in the charm. Now it is done.”
Who accepts a present from a foiled rapist?
Because this is a Greek tragedy, someone had to commit an earth shattering mistake. Up until this play, the egregious error has been talked over and lamented by the chorus. Oedipus’s marriage, Agamemnon’s hubris, Ajax’s pride, etc.
No one points out that accepting Hydra poisoned blood as a love charm was stupid. The closest the chorus gets to censuring such an obviously foolish decision:
“She, poor woman, knew nothing of this
but, seeing great injury for her home
from a new marriage swiftly approaching,
Applied her remedy.”
Wow. Why didn’t they expect better of her? Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon and the Chorus goes on for pages! Antigone dares to ceremonially bury her brother and is sentenced to death for disobedience! Why was it not shocking for a woman to take a love charm from an assailant?
Senator Al Franken has the last word today on Sophocles, “Mistakes are part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it’s a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.” Her mistake was fatal – her suicide will be discussed in next post. The lesson we should take is to never trust a centaur or a woman’s good sense.
On a side note, the philandering and perpetually absent Heracles wasn’t such a bad deal for this girl…she almost got raped by a creepy bullheaded river god.
“for my suitor was the river Achelous,
Who used to come to ask my father for my hand,
Taking three forms – first clearly a bull, and then
A serpent with shimmering coils, then a man’s body
But a bull’s face, and from his clump of beard
Whole torrents of water splashed like a fountain…
In my unhappiness I constantly prayed for death
Before I should ever come to HIS marriage bed.”
::shiver::
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