Anja Ibsen

Rhetoric 103A

GSI: Kuan S Hwa

8 October 2016

Euripides’ Hecuba

Slavery and The Female Form

             

Euripides’ Hecuba delineates the story of the enslaved Hecuba who tries to fight for her daughter’s life who is to be sacrificed for Achilles. In this key passage Polyxena announces her impending death that allows Euripides to dictate an expose on the horrors of slavery and how the female form is treated even in death.

Alas, for thy cruel sufferings! my persecuted mother! woe for thy life of grief! What grievous outrage some fiend hath sent on thee, hateful, horrible! No more shall I thy daughter share thy bondage, hapless youth on hapless age attending. For thou, alas! wilt see thy hapless child torn from thy arms, as a calf of the hills is torn from its mother, and sent beneath the darkness of the earth with severed throat for Hades, where with the dead shall I be laid, ah me! For thee I weep with plaintive wail, mother doomed to a life of sorrow! for my own life, its ruin and its outrage, never a tear I shed; nay, death is become to me a happier lot than life.

Polyxena states that through her ability to be put to death by being the sacrifice for Achilles’’ death she will be happier in death than she would be by continuing to live. Hecuba being enslaved does not even have the agency to die with her daughter. It is through this passage of Polyxena declaring that she would be better off dead than alive that we see the true toil that slavery impedes upon its captives. Hecuba states that she wishes to die with her daughter and that she will “cling to her like ivy to an oak,” however Odysseus belittles her claim by asserting “I did not know I had a master.” Thus, it is found “how cursed is slavery always in its nature, forced by the might of the stronger to endure unseemly treatment” and that Hecuba must endure this cursed way of life where she will be the servant to her master who is a man, without even the ability to commit suicide.

            The embodiment of the female form during the sacrifice of Polyxena is subjugated to male dominance, whilst it is still in need of being kept modest. Before Polyxena is killed she “took her robe and tore it open from the shoulder to the waist, displaying a breast” and stated to her executioner that he may slice her neck or her breast. It is then the executioner sliced the “channels of her breath and streams of blood gushed forth; but she, e’en in death’s agony, took good heed to fall with maiden grace, hiding from gaze of man what modest maiden must.” It is interesting that in this passage Polyxena tore her robe off and stated that she may be killed by being stabbed in her breast or having her throat being sliced open. This act of declaring how she is to be killed and by disrobing herself and uncovering her breast, a bodily feature that embodies her womanhood and the fertility that her death is squandering because she is a virgin who will never be able to feed her future child, gives agency in her death but also proclaims how the female body is being defeated by patriarchy. The act of covering her body up whilst she has just been slain asserts that the female body was seen as something profane. A group of soldiers are surrounding Polyxena when she is being sacrificed and they can watch her be killed; however it would be inexcusable for Polyxena to subject these men to seeing her vagina even when she is dying. It is through Polyxena’s sacrifice and her thoughtfulness in covering herself as to not make the men uncomfortable that thoroughly shows how the female form has become a profane entity.

Determined through Euripides’ Hecuba it is found that the female form is a profane object, thus it must be subdued by male dominance showcased through the enslavement of Hecuba and the sacrifice of Polyxena.