in Britannicus, Eriphyle plays a crucial thematic role in Iphigenia: as the envious outsider, the sullen loner, she malevolently and calculatedly corrodes the “family values” at the heart of the play. Plotwise, she is involved in a love triangle [Iphigenia, Achilles, and herself], and she plays a key role as well in Racine’s artful “surprise” denouement of the play.) Junia, among her other functions, serves, of course, as the “love interest” for the title character. (Some would argue that, like Antigone, Atalide, Monima, Iphigenia, and Aricia, Junia forms [with Britannicus and Nero] part of a love triangle — in Monima’s case it is more like a “tetrangle” — but later in this Discussion I will contend against that view.)
I have already demonstrated the pivotal role Junia plays as an equipotent adversary to Nero, the progress and resolution of their agon constituting the main theme of the play. Whereas he has no virtues, indeed, no admirable qualities at all (unless one considers his highly developed acting ability as one), she is virtue personified, having no qualities that are not admirable. (She is certainly Racine’s most noble character; compared with her, for example, even two of Racine’s most sympathetic characters, Berenice and Titus — both of them liable, at times, to be selfish, petty, and querulous — can seem almost ignoble.) And as I suggested in my excursus about Wagner’s Ring cycle, Junia’s ultimate defeat at Nero’s hands, the obliteration of the goodness, kindness, honesty, courage, and selflessness that she represents by the depravity, cruelty, cunning, mendacity, and selfishness that Nero represents, is what weighs so heavily and with such dire foreboding at the end of the play.
I must say I find untenable the views of those critics (several of whom are cited by Campbell [128–132]) who maintain that the outcome of the play in any way represents “the triumph of Junie” (as Volker Schröder [277] would have it), or, to quote the ecstatic view of Anne Ubersfeld (in “Racine auteur tragique,” cited by Campbell [133]), that “nowhere will you hear more clearly the pure song of the love that triumphs over violence and death, the love that is the very basis of resistance to the tyrant.” Even Campbell himself (132) asserts that Albina’s last lines “clearly show an isolated figure [i.e., Nero] with madness and suicide on the road ahead. It is hard to visualize this ending as the triumph of evil.” Au contraire: I would say that it is hard not to. Even if one were to concede that Nero is reduced to despair at the end of the play (and later I shall strenuously argue against such an interpretation), thirteen years (the time that would elapse before Nero would be forced to commit suicide in order to escape a much crueler demise) is a long “road.” Certainly, given the unmistakable personalities of these two moral adversaries, it would be just as absurd to maintain that Junia, grief-stricken over the death of Britannicus, will ever find any consolation, as it would be to maintain that Nero will never find any. With all that has come before, is it not the height of absurdity to imagine Nero as “heartbroken”? Surely, the play has amply demonstrated that he lacks the one thing needful to be reduced to such a condition. No, Nero will undoubtedly readily find another inamorata — another victim, that is — on whom to lavish his “affections.”
By contrast, the bloodier, more definitively “deadly” ending of Bajazet leaves us with far less of a sense of despair because no one in that play is sufficiently more virtuous or more moral, let alone nobler, than anyone else, for us to identify any decisive moral defeat. Granted, it is debatable which is the bleaker prospect: a world without goodness or one where goodness is defeated by evil. (If Nazi Germany had triumphed in World War II, would our spirits be uplifted or further crushed by the thought that so many brave, noble souls had fought the good fight in vain?) Campbell (131–32) does, however, cite the view of one French critic who would seem to be a staunch proponent of the latter view, Jean Emelina (“Les tragédies de Racine et le mal” 107), for whom, “despite his aversion to ‘pessimistic’ interpretations of le tragique racinien, this play is different: ‘The most unbearable thing — and here the sense of the tragic is absolute — is when the evildoer continues to live on happily and with impunity. This is the case, quite uniquely, with Néron. [...] Britannicus is without doubt the bleakest of Racine’s tragedies.’ ” But if, on the other hand, we are not to label the ending of Britannicus as tragic, are not to feel such a commensurate heavyheartedness, then, apparently, however grim the outcome of a play, as long as we have seen the cruel and crushing defeat of those who were conspicuously undeserving of meeting such an end, we have no choice but to consider it a “happy ending.”
XV
Having explored the antipodal aspect of Nero’s relationship with Junia, we must investigate the question of what it is that “attracts” Nero to Junia, and I use “attracts” in its broadest sense in order to comprise both my thesis, that Nero wishes to “obtain” Junia, and the rival thesis, as I will contentiously call it, namely, that Nero falls in love with Junia. This is an extremely complicated question and one that intertwines almost inextricably with the crucial question Ronald W. Tobin poses in his Jean Racine Revisited (71): “Why did Néron have Junie kidnapped?” One thing we can categorically assert is that he could not have done so because he was in love with her at that point, since, if he had ever seen her before, it could not have been at all recently (when they first meet, he upbraids her for having dared to “hide yourself so long from Nero’s sight” [II.iii.14]), and, as he testifies to Narcissus, when he supposedly fell in love with Junia, it was at first sight. Thus, the “love thesis” is irrelevant in addressing Tobin’s question. Whatever other explanations we may discover for Nero’s abduction of Junia, I venture to say that my thesis, that Nero wished to demonstrate his omnipotence by “obtaining” Junia, sufficiently accounts for it.
Clearly, we are to understand by Tobin’s query that a satisfactory answer must not only address the reason(s) for Nero’s abduction of Junia per se but must also offer some explanation of what he intended to “do with her” once she arrived at the palace, for her abduction, in and of itself, could hardly serve any purpose worth the trouble of arranging it. Here, of course, those who hold the view that Nero, after one distant, nocturnal glimpse of her, instantly fell in love, would readily answer that, of course, he, in the very next instant, determined to marry her, overcoming whatever obstacles stood in the way. But, again, such a view begs the question, Why did he abduct her in the first place? Whatever his motives in doing so, whatever plans he must have had about Junia’s future, must have existed before he fell in love with her. Indeed, we shall find that all of Nero’s behavior, all of his actions with regard to Junia, both before and after her abduction, can be accounted for by his deliberate design of “obtaining” her, and, furthermore, that, while some of his actions could just as well be accounted for by Nero’s being in love with Junia as by his objective of “obtaining” her, none of them need to be so explained, and, in fact, most of those actions could sooner be accounted for by his hating her than by his loving her.
Tobin himself (71) adduces two interesting, pregnant answers to his own question: “As Agrippine has surmised, Néron’s act is at once an adolescent’s symbolic signal of freedom from the mother and a desire to replace one female presence with another.” In regard to the first, Agrippina would seem to shed some light on Nero’s longer-range plans when she thus challenges Burrhus: “Explain why Nero, now a ravisher, / Pursues Silanus’ sister, abducting her. / Is it his aim to taint with infamy / The shining blood that Junia shares with me?” (I.ii.101–4). If her metaphorically couched surmise is correct (and the metaphor, conveniently, can represent equally well the insult to Agrippina and the injury to Junia), then we can assume it had been Nero’s intention before ever seeing Junia to ravish her. In that case, it is reasonable to regard such an outcome as amply answering the objective I have posited of Nero’s intending to “obtain” Junia. QED. In regard to Tobin’s second explanation (replacing one female presence with another), in what sense could Junia’s presence represent a replacement for Agrippina’s, unless Nero planned to marry Junia? For then, indeed, would Agrippina’s worst fears be realized:
Now, with a rival they’ve confronted me!
If
