Ariadne

The festival Phaedra began is now an annual event, and Phaedra enjoys hosting guests. At one such event, she is approached by a captain who compliments the wine, asking if it came from her sister’s husband, Dionysus. Phaedra is puzzled, having believed that Ariadne was dead. The captain explains that Ariadne is not only alive on Naxos but has married Dionysus; he is stunned that Phaedra herself is unaware. Theseus speaks to her in private and swears that he did not lie about Ariadne; he believes Artemis sent him a vision of Ariadne’s death so Theseus would leave her and Dionysus could wed her himself. He found out her true fate only recently and did not tell Phaedra so as not to worry her. Phaedra is furious, but their argument is interrupted when she goes into labor.

Phaedra gives birth to a son but does not adjust well to motherhood, feeling only “despair mixed with a faint pity” (199). The baby’s constant crying exhausts her, and she feels shame at her own lack of maternal feeling. Dreaming of her own escape, she finds herself unexpectedly longing for Theseus’s stories of faraway adventures, but she resents that her child looks exactly like him; she wonders if he will grow up to become like his father.