[In the following essay, Conroy examines the dynamic between gender, power, and sovereign authority in Alexandre le Grand and Athalie.]

Attitudes towards women in power and women in authority permeate all forms of seventeenth-century discourse. While the debate concerning female sovereignty and female regency was at its most heated in the latter half of the sixteenth century, the reality of women in public government was kept very alive throughout the grand siècle both by the regencies of Marie de Médicis (1610-31) and Anne d'Autriche (1643-61),¹ and by the reign of the neighbouring Christine de Suède (1632-54). Furthermore the issue of female governance was continually fuelled by the ongoing querelle des femmes, in which writers reflected on female ‘nature’ and capabilities, in order to support the idea of the superiority or inferiority of women, or the equality of the sexes. Parallel to this debate regarding women in authority, and their capacity to rule, a second discourse, separate from the first, although linked, concerned the exercise of power by women, or le pouvoir au féminin.² Clearly many noblewomen played an extremely important role in court politics, either overtly as for example in the case of the frondeuses, or more covertly through their much-maligned intrigues and influence.³ In the figure of the queen (or in the case of contemporary France, the queen regent) became embodied overtones of both power and authority, nonetheless considerable for having been obscured from history.

Much seventeenth-century drama reflects the conflict in opinion on these issues; while many dramatists uphold the patriarchy to portray women as incapable of stable government, dangerous when in power, whose rightful place is one of subservience, other texts implicitly question male hegemony, overthrow seemingly fixed hierarchies, and present alternative realities, within which women either successfully and competently rule, imbued with an authority which is legitimately theirs, or within which their exercise of power is portrayed as a positive influence. Among the most obvious examples of strong, authoritative and powerful female sovereigns are probably those which feature in Corneille's work, a fact which has not escaped critics before now. However, despite the ubiquitous presence of the queen-figure in the Racinian corpus, a corpus in which moreover the theme of sovereignty is so often an important concern, the representation of female sovereignty or women in government has not, to the best of my knowledge, received adequate attention.⁴ The aim of this chapter then is to examine the dynamic between gender, power and (sovereign) authority in two plays where, to different degrees and in different ways, it is of considerable pertinence, namely in Alexandre le Grand and Athalie.

Any examination of this kind of dynamic requires definition of the terms concerned. The notion of gender then, as a conceptual category of analysis, hinges on an appreciation of the dynamics of sociocultural conditioning in defining what is appropriate behaviour for, and hence in constructing attitudes towards, both sexes. The concept of power, within the context of this chapter is used in two ways: firstly I use the concept in the precise sense as defined by Weber, in his classic distinction between power and authority. Power, for Weber, ‘is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests’. Authority on the other hand hinges on concepts of legitimacy, i.e. when a person has the legitimate ‘right’ to carry out his/her will.⁵ This then is what is meant by power and authority within the context of the plays themselves. However on a broader scale, I also draw on the Foucauldian definition of power as a network of relations which informs discourse.⁶ Since literature plays a role in the maintenance of hierarchical discursive relations, it is interesting to examine to what extent these two plays of Racine's can be seen to uphold or question the epistemological paradigms of the dominant discourses of the time.

Finally, the issue of power and authority necessarily evokes the theme of politics. Much ink has been spilt, as Pierre Ronzeaud's recent synthesis indicates, concerning the conflicting viewpoints of the importance of politics in Racine's œuvre.⁷ It is not the aim of this chapter, however, to enter into this debate, nor to analyse what Racine may have thought himself about female sovereignty. While clearly anxious not to reduce these plays to mere political statement, nor to see them naïvely as a transparent reflection of contemporary ideas, the following analysis aims to examine what role Racine attributes to Axiane and Athalie, and how their power or authority is represented.

Before analysing the representation of these two Racinian female sovereigns, Axiane and Athalie, it is necessary however to outline briefly the conflicting attitudes, alluded to above, which permeate seventeenth-century writings concerning women's power or their ability to rule, and which inform the backdrop of any seventeenth-century drama which discusses these issues. At the risk of simplification, what follows gives an idea of the two most extreme (but very widespread) viewpoints. As is well known, a falsification of the Salic law which excluded women from the French throne had been ratified as the first fundamental law of the state by the Paris parlement in 1593. This exclusion was justified throughout much political and legal discourse of the seventeenth century by a repetitive argumentation, marked by the same recurrent topoi. According to Cardin Le Bret, in a text which became the handbook of many theorists, Salic law was perfectly justifiable, since women were physically and intellectually weak and imperfect by nature, while men were endowed with courage, strength and judgement.⁸ Some years later, in his Testament politique, Richelieu elaborates the same idea and is clearly of the same opinion:

Le Gouvernement des Royaumes requiert une vertu mâle et une fermeté inébranlable. […] Les femmes, paresseuses et peu secrètes de leur nature, sont si peu propres au gouvernement que, si on considère encore qu'elles sont fort sujettes à leurs passions et, par conséquent, peu susceptibles de raison et de justice, ce seul principe les exclut de toute administration publique.

[The government of kingdoms requires masculine virtue and unwavering strength. […] Women, lazy and indiscreet by nature, are so little suited to government that, when one also considers that they are strongly subject to their passions, and consequently, little prone to reason and justice, this principle alone excludes them from all public administration.]⁹

While Le Bret and Richelieu may be the two best-known examples, they are certainly not the only ones: earlier Louis Turquet de Mayerne had also maintained that gynecocracy (i.e. female rule) can never be stable, since women are delicate and weak, subject to the sways of passion, and, unlike the male sex, bereft of royal virtues such as fermeté, prudence, and magnanimité,¹⁰ while in 1661 Jean François Senault takes another tack and highlights the opinion of ‘un grand nombre de Politiques’ regarding the pernicious consequences of the qualities which women do possess: according to Senault it is commonly held by these ‘Politiques’ that when women are admitted to, or called upon to assume, sovereign authority, they are ambitious and cruel, ‘fatales à leur Empire et funestes à leurs sujets’ [disastrous for their empire and fatal for their subjects].¹¹ These few quotations, of which there are many other examples, illustrate the weight of what can be termed the exclusionist discourse. What becomes evident then is that the exclusion of women from the throne is justified and defended firstly through gender constructions based on an accumulation of essentialisms concerning women's ‘nature’—women, for example, are allegedly inconstant, fragile, malicious, false, rash, lascivious, ambitious—which constitutes the social and cultural construction labelled as Woman. It is furthermore justified through the mapping of a so-called natural order as patriarchal and paternalistic, and finally through the construction of sovereignty itself as exclusively male. The definition of the prerequisites for sovereignty in exclusively male terms results in the construction of sovereignty itself as exclusively male, and automatically excludes women. Essentialisms, and consistent use of binary opposites, combine to construct a reality whereby women are prevented from playing a public role by their inherent ‘natural’ flaws, and by their lack of ‘male’ virtues. In sum, the dynamics of what excludes them hinges on a fluctuating continuum between what women ‘are’ and what they ‘are not’.

There is of course the other side of the coin, which can be found in the writings of feminists such as Du Bosc, Le Moyne, Saint Gabriel, and Poullain de la Barre, all of whom maintain that women can rule. According to Le Moyne,

Les Estats ne se gouvernent pas avec la barbe, ny par l'austerité du visage: Ils se gouvernent par la force de l'Esprit et avec la vigueur et l'adresse de la Raison: et l'Esprit peut bien estre aussi fort, et la Raison aussi vigoureuse et aussi adroite, dans la teste d'une Femme que celle d'un Homme.

[States are not governed by a beard or by an austere facial expression. They are governed by strength of mind and by the vigour and skill of Reason; and a mind can be as strong, and Reason as vigorous and skilful, in a woman's head as in a man's.]¹²

Theories of intellectual and moral equality between the sexes are consistently toyed with, and are certainly not negligible in their attempt to redefine gender relations. They do, however, have to be treated with a certain caution, as one would treat a double-edged sword: while on the one hand these writings go a considerable way towards questioning the androcentric bias of society, on the other hand some (although not all) of their underlying principles can be seen to be as much of a disenablement as the exclusionist discourse, either once again founded on essentialisms such as douceur, délicatesse, portraying women as doubly strong and praiseworthy because ‘naturally’ weak, or relegating women to the sphere of the physical, the status of desired object, maintaining she rules by her beauty or physical traits.

As regards the ubiquitous discourse concerning the exercise of power by women, once again opinions are divided, although as with women in government the overriding attitude is negative. While on the one hand Louis himself warns his son against their pernicious influence,¹³ on the other hand feminists such as Gerzan are laudatory of the role they play, maintaining that promotion of men or of families often depends on the power-broking of their womenfolk.¹⁴

Against this backdrop, where, if anywhere, does Racine fit in? Examination of the representation of Axiane and Athalie may throw some light on the different ‘discursive elements’ concerning gender relations which surface, consciously or unconsciously, in Racine's work.¹⁵

It is a commonplace by now to say that traces of Corneille can be seen in Racine's early plays. However, while this Cornelian heritage in often perceived in terms of language or the portrayal of heroism, one of the most striking links is in the representation of women. What Harriet Allentuch has said of Corneille's women could equally be applied to many of Racine's early female characters. Allentuch maintains that ‘they pursue the characteristic Cornelian dream of complete self-mastery and strive like his heroes to shape their own destinies by the exercise of their will. […] They assert, in play after play, […] a desire to be judged by the same standards as men.’¹⁶ As the following analysis shall indicate, it is precisely in this fashion that Racine portrays Axiane, a figure doubly interesting since entirely invented by the dramatist, although one which seems to have largely escaped critical attention.¹⁷

One of the ways in which both dramatists accord their female characters greater autonomy is by refusing to restrict them to a ‘female’ ethic. Racine, as Corneille had done before him, transcends the discourse of what according to the bienséance is allowed for men and women; what are regarded as masculine and feminine universes may exist but they are not inhabited exclusively by the respective sexes. Male and female roles are reversed; the character most associated with douceur, usually perceived as a stereotypically female attribute, is Alexandre.¹⁸ Similarly, from the outset of the play it appears that far from embodying any allegedly feminine ethic, Axiane is on the contrary more easily aligned with a masculine military ethic. It is she who incites others to war. This becomes apparent from the very first reference to her, when Taxile describes her reactions to Alexandre's arrival (Alexandre le Grand, Act I. 1, ll. 71-6).¹⁹ Although his comments are marked by the neo-Platonist idea that women wield power through their beauty, an idea highlighted here by the language of galanterie used by her admirer, nonetheless her role is clear: ‘elle met tout en armes’. Porus later reiterates the same idea, reminiscing on how her beauty inspired neighbouring kings to battle.²⁰ Interestingly, when it is given to Axiane herself to highlight her role, the emphasis on her beauty is dropped: although she is aware of the power she exerts over her two lovers, Racine nonetheless gives it to her to eschew the language which constructs her as an object of male desire, and which excludes her from the domain of real power. In her own speech, her emphasis is solely on her gloire. As she comments to Taxile:

Il faut, s'il est vrai que l'on m'aime,
Aimer la Gloire, autant que je l'aime moi-même …
Il faut marcher sans crainte au milieu des alarmes;
Il faut combattre, vaincre, ou périr sous les armes.

(Alexandre le Grand, Act IV. 3, ll. 1197-8, ll. 1201-2)²¹

The role she plays is clear, as she encourages Porus in his decision to fight (Act II. 5), announces her intention to try one last time to incite Taxile's men to battle (l. 667), and later tries to prompt Taxile himself to action (Act IV. 3, ll. 1225-8).

Despite this alignment with a military ethic, Axiane certainly does not fit into the often-eroticized myth of the warrior woman found in some contemporary representations of Zénobie and Sémiramis. However, it is precisely the fact that she is not a guerrière which makes her most interesting. Racine subverts the idea that the association of women with military values is only possible in portrayals of the guerrière; instead he constructs the dramatic reality of a woman whose sense of heroism and gloire is inextricably linked to a military ethic, but who does not actively participate in battle.²²

Axiane's character is thrown into relief by its stark contrast with that of Cléofile, whose value system is a direct antithesis to that of the Indian queen, and who represents the embodiment of sovereign Reason.²³ (Cléofile, as is well known, tries throughout the play to convince her brother Taxile not to fight Alexandre, with whom she is in love). Nowhere is this antithesis more apparent than in Act III. 1 which sees a confrontation between the two women. Resonances of enclosure, of control, and of the association of women with the interior, or private sphere, are evident from the opening lines of this central act when Axiane, furious, discovers that she has been confined within Taxile's camp:

Quoi, Madame, en ces lieux on me tient enfermée?
Je ne puis au combat voir marcher mon Armée?

(Alexandre le Grand, Act III. 1, ll. 685-6)

The enormous divide between the two women is clear as Cléofile's argument that Taxile is only worried about Axiane's safety (implying that the battlefield clearly is no place for a woman), and that she can be tranquil and safe within the camp, evidently only further infuriates Axiane.²⁴ The confrontation with Cléofile can be read also as the confrontation of two ethics, one militarist, one pacifist, both represented here by a woman—further evidence of Racine's subversion of concepts of gendered universes; while there may be two opposing ethics, they are not gender-specific.

Axiane is also clearly an antithesis to Taxile, whom she openly castigates and even mocks throughout the play. Her sense of heroism is implicitly contrasted with his in III. 2 and in IV. 3 when she is evidently disgusted by his hesitancy to act (ll. 781-4 and 1229-32). She is aligned in the play only with Porus. This notion of an equality between them, an equal sense of gloire (misguided though it may be),²⁵ is highlighted in her monologue in Act IV. 2 where, believing Porus to be dead, she maintains that she too will seek death; as she says of Alexandre, in an apostrophe to Porus:

Il me verra, toujours digne de toi,
Mourir en reine, ainsi que tu mourus en roi.

(Alexandre le Grand, Act IV. 1, ll. 1031-2)

For Axiane, to die as a queen is the same as to die as a king, i.e. with one's gloire intact. She perceives her refusal to accept Alexandre's peace and her quest for immediate death as of an equal stature to Porus's death on the battlefield, since she perceives their gloire as of equal proportions.

Axiane's sense of heroism clearly influences her attitudes towards her throne and her sovereignty, attitudes which subvert the received idea of women's ambition and thirst for power. Axiane is furious when Taxile implies that her throne would become a gift from her enemies, and that her reign would hinge on an obligation to Alexandre: it becomes clear that she would rather not reign at all, than reign under those conditions (ll. 807-10, ll. 815-16). Interestingly, both Cléofile and Alexandre misjudge Axiane; both believe that Axiane, when offered what Cléofile calls ‘l'empire’ (l. 834) and what Alexandre refers to as ‘trois diadèmes’ (l. 870), will accept Taxile as a husband. Neither fully understands the importance to her of her gloire, and how she perceives it. Further light is thrown on the issue when she distinguishes between her own ambition and that of Alexandre, juxtaposing the fact that she and Porus were satisfied with their own states, with his policy of conquest, which, echoing Porus (ll. 529 ff.), she criticizes (ll. 110 2 ff.). This comparison is important since it further illuminates Axiane's motivations and makes her more sympathetic a character. Racine ensures that we do not accept unequivocally the portrait of the proud, hard, inflexible queen which the others paint of her, and points to the ambiguities within her character. Not only does her tirade to Alexandre implicitly support the idea that her militarism is associated more with a defence ideal, a defence of her states and her subjects,²⁶ but in addition her reference to Porus, and their mutual feelings (‘charmés l'un de l'autre’) indicates to what extent Axiane embodies not only a military ethic, but also an affective ethic. Furthermore, while her character for the most part hinges on the dynamic between the two, it seems at times, certainly in her monologue in IV. 1, that her love for Porus is more important to her than her gloire:

J'expliquais mes soupirs en faveur de la Gloire,
Je croyais n'aimer qu'elle. Ah pardonne, grand Roi,
Je sens bien aujourd'hui que je n'aimais que toi.

(Alexandre le Grand, Act IV. 1, ll. 1010-12)

Through the alleged loss of Porus, Axiane then reaches a greater self-awareness.²⁷

What ultimately defines Axiane, however, lies not in her militarism, nor in her love for Porus, but in her sense of self. In Alexandre's invitation to her to continue reigning (ll. 1166-9) and to reassure her states by choosing a husband (i.e. Taxile), Racine reminds us of the very common topos that an unmarried queen cannot reign on her own but must marry.²⁸ However, the dramatist imbues Axiane with a self-determination which overrides even her interest in her throne, and which is most clearly revealed in her resistance to the patriarchal order, her refusal to conform. While she never insists on her right to reign alone, she does, nevertheless, refuse to marry a man she does not love. Even when Taxile is finally provoked by her insults to reply with a vague threat, that her fate and indeed states, are essentially in his hands (ll. 1237-40), it falls on deaf ears; she continues her defiance until the very end—clearly preferring death to subjugation (ll. 1251-2), still railing against her confinement in the camp (l. 1397), challenging Alexandre (ll. 1448-50, ll. 1461-4), and refusing to be used as an object of barter or exchange.²⁹ Even after Taxile's death, Axiane is prepared to die, proclaiming her love for Porus (ll. 1543-6). Her autonomy as a person transcends even her role as sovereign, and as a young unmarried woman she can be read here, in the same fashion as Anne M. Menke has read the seventeenth-century widow, namely as ‘a site of resistance to the political and sexual economies’.³⁰

What makes this refusal even more remarkable is that it affects everyone. One of the criticisms aimed at Racine when this play appeared, and indeed to which the dramatist replied in his preface, was the idea that Alexandre was depicted as of lesser heroic stature than Porus.³¹ The central character of the play has usually been seen to be one of these two or, more unusually, Cléofile.³² However, it is arguable that much of the power is in fact in the hands of Axiane. Not only does she exert a large influence over Taxile and Porus and their respective fates, but most interestingly Cléofile and Alexandre are also implicated in her actions: Axiane's decision concerning Taxile indirectly affects the possibility of Alexandre's marriage to Cléofile. As Alexandre comments, regarding Taxile:

Et puisque mon repos doit dépendre du sien
Achevons son bonheur pour établir le mien.

(Alexandre le Grand, Act III. 6, ll. 983-4)

Since Cléofile's marriage requires Taxile's consent (l. 957), Alexandre's happiness depends on Taxile's, which in turn depends on Axiane. If Alexandre can persuade (or force) Axiane to marry Taxile, the latter would be more likely to favour the union between Alexandre and his sister. Cléofile, who initially persuaded Taxile not to fight Alexandre, and feels responsible on this account for the fact that her brother incurred Axiane's scorn, is equally aware of the potential consequences of Axiane's refusal on her own fate. As she comments regarding her brother:

Tant que Porus vivra, que faut-il qu'il devienne?
Sa perte est infaillible, et peut-être la mienne.
Oui, oui, si son amour ne peut rien obtenir
Il m'en rendra coupable, et m'en voudra punir.

(Alexandre le Grand, Act V. 1, ll. 1333-6)

Twice Alexandre appears to grant Taxile power over Axiane (l. 869 and ll. 1418-20), but it becomes clear that it is an empty power (just as Alexandre's own power is consistently thwarted by Axiane since he insists in channelling it through Taxile); potentially bereft of her states, a virtual prisoner, Axiane is nonetheless empowered by her refusal. It is she who, at the centre of this chain reaction, is the controlling mechanism. It is in fact only Taxile's death—the elimination of the element which Axiane refused to accept—which finally restores Alexandre's power to him in the final scene. The dynamics of power then shift, as Alexandre decides the fate of Axiane and Porus. What is particularly interesting about this fictional universe, is that while Axiane's power throughout the play could have been portrayed as a negative force, leading ultimately to her own death if Alexandre had not spared Porus (since she was determined to die with him), and allowing her self-determination and triumph only in death, Racine on the contrary allows this young rebellious queen to triumph alive. That this triumph is a necessary corollary of Racine's insistence that the real subject matter of the play is the générosité of Alexandre,³³ cannot entirely deprive it of significance. We are nonetheless presented with a portrait of this central figure as a defiant and independent queen, an agent of her own destiny and to a large extent that of others, who insists on her autonomy as an individual as any male hero would. While her capacity to rule is not explicitly discussed, this entirely invented souveraine is depicted as successful and capable, interested in the defence of her states; she is a character who exemplifies none of the qualities common in exclusionist argumentation, who does not rule solely through douceur, and whose representation subverts both gender constructions of woman, and the concept of sovereignty as male. In a century in which women are clearly excluded from the throne, it seems to me that Racine manages to create a dramatic universe which presents an alternative reality to that which predominates in the political, legal and even feminist discourses, without creating an exceptional or ‘male’ heroine.

If gender is implicitly an issue in Alexandre le Grand, it is clearly explicitly so in the powerful representation of the eponymous Athalie. While Axiane seems to have been much neglected by critics, Athalie's characterization, and moreover Athalie's depiction as sovereign, has certainly not escaped recent critical attention. What is most remarkable about the characterization of Athalie is the vast discrepancy between the reported discourse concerning her, and the impressions we receive of her both through her own speeches and through her actions on stage. It becomes clear in fact that Athalie's character can be analysed as a triptych of clearly demarcated (although interlocking) portraits: firstly the queen as she is represented by her enemies, secondly as she represents herself, and finally as she appears on stage—a triptych therefore which, broadly speaking, focuses on Athalie as monster, as sovereign and as woman. It is along these three lines that this analysis shall proceed.

The images of the queen which predominate in the first act (which are all reported since of course Athalie is entirely absent throughout the act) are those of a bloodthirsty, vengeful figure. In describing the massacre of the princes, Josabet comments:

Un poignard à la main l'implacable Athalie
Au carnage animait ses barbares Soldats,
Et poursuivait le cours de ses assassinats.

(Athalie, Act I. 2, ll. 244-6)

Racine reminds us of this role of hers by reiterating the same gory image later, referring to her preparations to attack the temple with her troops (l. 1537). References to her rage, her cruelty and her fury pepper the text, as do allusions to her as impie, insolente and injuste. The monstrosity of her actions is highlighted since the princes were her own descendants: Athalie is not only a murderer but an infanticide—‘une mère en fureur’ (l. 1295). She has (in the past at least) smothered all maternal instinct, and has acted against ‘Nature’. Her own maternal lineage is frequently evoked pejoratively by her opponents, who refer to her as ‘de Jézabel la fille sanguinaire’ (l. 59), ‘cette autre Jézabel’ (l. 761) and ‘de Jézabel la Fille meurtrière’ (l. 1329). This portrait of Athalie, hardly surprisingly one propagated by her enemies, contrasts hugely with the Athalie whom we initially see in the play; this contrast is itself highlighted by the differences between her reported entrance into the temple in Act II. 1, and her actual entrance in Act II. 2 and account of the same incident. In Zacharie's account, her violation of convention is highlighted:

Une Femme … Peut-on la nommer sans blasphème?
Une Femme … C'était Athalie elle-même.
[…]
Dans un des parvis aux hommes réservé
Cette Femme superbe entre le front levé,
Et se préparait même à passer les limites
De l'enceinte sacrée ouverte aux seuls Lévites.

(Athalie, Act II. 3, ll. 395-6, 397-400)

The idea of spatial, religious and gender transgression (the latter emphasized by Racine's use of anaphora) are highlighted by Joad's immediate outburst,³⁴ which apparently she greets with an ‘œil farouche.’

All this contrasts radically with her actual arrival on stage, clearly a distracted and anxious figure. Her opening words are of trouble, faiblesse, and impotence (‘je ne puis’); she appears dependent on her male advisers (sending for Mathan immediately, and later insisting that Abner stay), and in constant pursuit of peace which clearly escapes her (ll. 435-8). It also contrasts with her account of her visit to the temple, in which it becomes clear that she was motivated by ‘la frayeur’, and by instinct, anxious not to blaspheme (as Zacharie (l. 408) had earlier presumed), but to pacify the god of the Jews by offering him gifts (ll. 526-9). What is reported then as her defiant transgression in one account becomes the efforts of an anxious woman to ward off danger in her own account (not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive). While flashes of Athalie's authority and pride continue to appear throughout this first appearance of hers (II. 3-II. 7), nonetheless the overriding image is one of confusion and anxiety. To what extent this second portrait is essentially one of Athalie as stereotypical Woman is a point to which I shall return below. Suffice to say here that by continually reminding his spectators that the images of Athalie as monster are belied by the anxious, troubled character with which we are presented for the most part, Racine highlights the ambiguities in Athalie's character, and manages to evoke considerable sympathy for his heroine.³⁵

The third aspect of Athalie's characterization, the queen as sovereign, plays a vital role in her self-definition and representation. As Grégoire indicates in a stimulating article concerning the patriarchal law in Esther and Athalie, the monarchical maxim of ‘une foi, une loi, un roi,’ to which Racine adhered is unwittingly undermined by another reality throughout these two plays which could be summed up as ‘des fois, des lois, des reines’.³⁶ In this respect, her key speech of II. 5 is particularly revelatory, and merits lengthy quotation:

Je ne veux point ici rappeler le passé
Ni vous rendre raison du sang que j'ai versé.
Ce que j'ai fait, Abner, j'ai cru le devoir faire.
Je ne prends point pour juge un peuple téméraire;
Quoi que son insolence ait osé publier,
Le Ciel même a pris soin de me justifier.
Sur d'éclatants succès ma puissance établie
A fait jusqu'aux deux Mers respecter Athalie.
Par moi Jérusalem goûte un calme profond
Le Jourdain ne voit plus d'Arabe vagabond
Ni l'altier Philistin, par d'éternels ravages,
Comme au temps de vos Rois, désoler ses rivages;
Le Syrien me traite et de Reine et de Sœur.
Enfin de ma Maison le perfide Oppresseur,
Qui devait jusqu'à moi pousser sa barbarie,
Jéhu, le fier Jéhu, tremble dans Samarie;
De toutes parts pressé par un puissant Voisin,
Que j'ai su soulever contre cet Assassin,
Il me laisse en ces lieux souveraine maîtresse.
Je jouissais en paix du fruit de ma sagesse.

(Athalie, Act II. 5, ll. 465-84)

In her version of past events, there is no elaborate justification of her past actions, but rather a brief indication that she was motivated by a notion (misguided or other) of duty (l. 467). Elaborating some scenes later, she justifies her actions in terms of vengeance—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—and self-defence:

Oui, ma juste fureur, et j'en fais vanité,
A vengé mes Parents sur ma postérité. […]
Où serais-je aujourd'hui, si domptant ma faiblesse
Je n'eusse d'une Mère étouffé la tendresse,
Si de mon propre sang ma main versant des flots
N'eût par ce coup hardi réprimé vos complots?

(Athalie, Act II. 7, ll. 709-10, ll. 723-6)

As Bruneau comments, ‘[elle] n'a fait que obéir à la loi juive du talion’.³⁷

Secondly, what also becomes apparent in II. 5 is that contrary to Joad's perception (l. 73), Athalie clearly perceives herself not as the usurper but rather the legitimate ruler, an idea with which seventeenth-century political thought would have concurred. In the many seventeenth-century political treatises which broached the questions of tyranny, usurpation and political legitimacy, it was commonly upheld, as is well known, that a usurper whose reign was successful became in time legitimate.³⁸ Racine ensures that what emerges from Athalie's speech is precisely the image of a successful recent reign, which she in turn interprets as divine justification of her actions, and hence proof of her legitimacy.³⁹ References to the success, power, respect, calm, peace, wisdom of the queen are juxtaposed with the mention of the ravages of previous kings, a juxtaposition underlined by the subversion of the roi/père topos of patriarchal thought to reine/sœur. It is of further interest to note that this success is depicted as founded on political skill and ability: Athalie has created a situation politically, through the creation of a powerful alliance, which Jéhu cannot change, and which protects her and her subjects from him. The authority of this souveraine maîtresse, and the association of her reign with peace and calm, clearly do not spring from any male-constructed so-called female douceur but rather from her political skill. Certainly, no description of any reign could be more opposed to the common topos of female government as being synonymous with chaos and disarray, le monde à l'envers. Later in the scene a certain political astuteness is once again hinted at, as she outlines what appears to be politically expedient tolerance in her treatment of the Jewish priests:

Vos Prêtres, je veux bien, Abner, vous l'avouer,
Des bontés d'Athalie ont lieu de se louer.
Je sais sur ma conduite et contre ma puissance
Jusqu'où de leurs discours ils portent licence.
Ils vivent cependant, et leur Temple est debout.

(Athalie, Act II. 7, ll. 593-7)

Aware of the priests' criticisms of her and her power, she turns a blind eye, prepared to allow different creeds within her kingdom in order to maintain stability. However, Athalie is not prepared to do so any more if pushed to the limit, and is unafraid to exercise her authority and to ensure she is obeyed; as she comments to Abner, ‘Je puis, quand je voudrai, parler en Souveraine’ (l. 592).⁴⁰

Be that as it may, apart from rare flashes of authority such as this, it is clear that for the most part, Athalie's political skill is portrayed as an attribute of the past, to be implicitly contrasted with her political errors of the present.⁴¹ Her considered and swift judgement is now replaced by fatal indecision, a metamorphosis due less to her dream than to her encounter with Joas. While clearly disturbed by her dream (which explains the inhabitual behaviour to which Abner (ll. 51-2) referred to), she is also aware of the dangers, and orders Mathan to round up her Tyrian mercenaries (ll. 615-16). However, it is following her encounter with Joas that she most hesitates, giving rise to Nabal's and Mathan's comments regarding ‘ses voeux irrésolus’ (l. 869) and ‘son courroux chancelant, incertain’ (l. 885)—an indecision all the more surprising since she is aware that Joad knows more about Joas's origins than he pretends (ll. 909-10). It is the physical presence of Joas apparently that has altered Athalie. It is left to Mathan to sum up this change:

Ami, depuis deux jours je ne la connais plus.
Ce n'est plus cette reine éclairée, intrépide,
Elevée au-dessus de son sexe timide,
Qui d'abord accablait ses ennemis surpris
Et d'un instant perdu connaissait tout le prix.
La peur d'un vain remords trouble cette grande âme.
Elle flotte, elle hésite, en un mot: elle est femme.

(Athalie, Act III. 3, ll. 870-6)

Athalie was then, in the past, beyond her sex (here constructed by Racine as the weaker); according to her adviser (and, it would seem, to Racine), her fearlessness, political awareness and astuteness are qualities that are essentially beyond women, just as success as a sovereign is not a female prerogative. Athalie is exceptional to her sex, in a way Axiane never was. Where Athalie was in the past beyond her sex, she is now stereotypical Woman, identifiable by her hesitancy and fear.

This idea of her being beyond her sex is constructed within the play along two (related) axes. Firstly she is perceived as exceptional and can rule solely because she plays a male role; secondly it is precisely in smothering all so-called female instinct that she succeeded as she did. As we have seen, she herself has earlier referred to her necessity to smother all maternal instinct; it is the interview with Joas which awakens it:

Quel prodige nouveau me trouble et m'embarrasse?
La douceur de sa voix, son enfance, sa grâce,
Font insensiblement à mon inimitié
Succèder … Je serais sensible à la pitié?

(Athalie, Act II. 7, ll. 651-4)

Nonetheless, lest spectators become too sympathetic towards his anti-heroine, Racine incorporates elements of her own greed and vanity into her downfall. To my mind, however, it is debatable what importance should be attached to her greed (which prior to Act V merits one brief mention (l. 48)) in her entrance into the temple;⁴² it seems on the contrary that Racine, having built up considerable sympathy for Athalie, not least by his (unwitting?) portrayal of the so-called original legitimate order as represented by Joad as intolerant and fanatical, needs now to justify her death, and so once again emphasizes her pride and greed.

Ultimately, what defines Athalie is not her depiction as monster, or as sovereign, or as woman, but a complex interplay of all three. On one level, it is arguable that she dies because she is no longer a ‘monster’, because she allows her smothered so-called emotional feminine qualities to resurface and decide her actions. According to Grégoire, as a ‘man’ Athalie could rule; however ‘redevenue femme’, and therefore caught up by her emotions, she can no longer enforce the royal law.⁴³ This return to her so-called femininity is signalled not only by her maternal reaction to Joas, and her trouble, but also by her loss of political astuteness which Racine reflects in her lack of wariness regarding what all seventeenth-century theorists warned consistently against: the perfidious, flattering adviser.⁴⁴

On another more profound level though, it can be argued that Athalie dies not because of her return to what essentially is a gender construction of Woman, but rather because she is, in reality, a woman in power, a threat to the patriarchy which must be removed. As Bruneau indicates:

si Athalie est exclue par les Juifs, c'est bien sûr parce qu'elle sert d'autres dieux que le leur, mais d'une autre façon bien plus rédhibitoire, parce qu'elle est femme et qu'elle échappe à la domestication patriarcale et à la symbolisation monothéiste.

[if Athalie is excluded by the Jews, it is of course because she serves other gods than theirs, but in another more damning way, because she is a woman and because she escapes patriarchal domestication and monotheist symbolization.]⁴⁵

Furthermore, in sacrificing her to the patriarchy, Racine paradoxically questions its tenets. According to Grégoire, Racine weakens both the prestige of the patriarchal order and its law, and paradoxically invites reflection on the nature of power, and those who exercise it.⁴⁶ Despite Athalie's sometime power, she finishes stripped of both her sovereign authority and power, and is subverted back into the patriarchy by the dénouement of the play: it is through the dénouement then that Racine ultimately upholds the patriarchy.

Now while the purpose of this chapter is certainly not to compare these two radically different plays, it does seem justifiable to say that what was possible to dramatize as a reality in 1665 no longer was the case in 1691. Nonetheless, I cannot agree with Jean Dubu, who maintains that Athalie clearly indicates that women are unable to exercise political power.⁴⁷ While that is ultimately what the dénouement implies, we cannot neglect the constant references to the past success of this souveraine. In fact, one of the ambiguities of the play is that Racine has in fact demonstrated that women can rule. What he seems to imply, however, is that they should not. Theory and practice unwittingly collide.

To conclude very briefly, it seems to me that the exclusionist discourse examined at the beginning is, to varying extents and in different ways, undermined by these two plays of Racine's. In this respect Racine joins a host of other playwrights who, consciously or unconsciously, question the epistemological paradigms of the dominant discourses of their own society. The ‘known fact’ that women cannot rule is challenged, the fact that women are ‘by nature’ excluded from power is therefore challenged, and alternative possibilities are presented.

Notes

1. While Anne d'Autriche's regency ended officially on 7 September 1651 at the declaration of the majority of Louis XIV, she nonetheless continued to run the country with Mazarin until the latter's death in 1661.

2. For a wide-ranging appreciation of the forms these powers took, see Danielle Haase Dubosc and Éliane Viennot (eds), Femmes et pouvoirs sous l'ancien régime (Paris: Rivages, 1991); Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier and Éliane Viennot (eds), Royaume de fémynie. Pouvoirs, contraintes, espaces de liberté des femmes de la Renaissance à la Fronde (Paris: Champion, 1999), and XVII^e siècle, 144 (1984).

3. See Ch. 10, ‘Women in Political and Civic Life’ in Wendy Gibson, Women in Seventeenth-Century France (London: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 141-67.

4. One notable exception is Anne M. Menke's article ‘The Widow Who Would Be Queen: The Subversion of Patriarchal Monarchy in Rodogune and Andromaque’, Cahiers du dix-septième, 7. 1 (1997), 205-14. On the dynamic between power and authority, see Simone Ackerman, ‘Roxane et Pulchérie: Autorité réelle et pouvoir illusoire’, Cahiers du dix-septième, 2. 2 (1988), 49-64. On sovereignty, see for example Timothy J. Reiss's ‘Banditry, Madness and Sovereign Authority: Alexandre le Grand’, in Sylvie Romanowski and Monique Bilezikian (eds), Homage to Paul Bénichou (Birmingham, AL: Summa, 1994), pp. 113-42.

5. See Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans. and ed. by Talcott Parsons (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997).

6. See for example Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, ed. Colin Gordon (Brighton: Harvester, 1980), p. 198.

7. Pierre Ronzeaud, ‘Racine et la politique: la perplexité de la critique’, Œuvres et Critiques, 24. 1 (1999), Présences de Racine (Tübingen: Gunter Narr), pp. 136-58.

8. Cardin Le Bret, De la Souveraineté du Roy (Paris: Jacques Quesnel, 1632), p. 31.

9. Richelieu, Testament politique ou Les Maximes d'Etat de Monsieur le Cardinal de Richelieu (Paris: Complexe, 1990), pp. 31-2. (This text was probably written between 1630 and 1638 and, although unpublished at the time, would have circulated in manuscript).

10. Louis Turquet de Mayerne, La monarchie aristodemocratique, ou le gouvernement composé et meslé des trois formes de legitimes Republiques (Paris: J. Berjon, 1611), pp. 59, 62.

11. Jean François Senault, Le monarque ou les devoirs du souverain (Paris: Pierre le Petit, 1661), pp. 43-4.

12. Pierre Le Moyne, Gallerie des femmes fortes (Paris: A. de Sommaville, 1647), p. 10. On the debate regarding gender and reason, particularly the idea that reason in women could prevent societal decay, since anti-violent and anti-militarist, see Timothy Reiss, ‘Corneille and Cornelia: reason, violence and the cultural status of the feminine; or how a dominant discourse recuperated and subverted the advance of women’, Renaissance Drama, 18 (1987), 3-41.

13. ‘Dès lors que vous donnez la liberté à une femme de vous parler des choses importantes, il est impossible qu'elles ne vous fassent faillir. La tendresse que nous avons pour elles, nous faisant goûter leurs plus mauvaises raisons, nous fait tomber insensiblement du côté où elles penchent, et la faiblesse qu'elles ont naturellement leur fait presque toujours prendre le mauvais parti’ [Whenever you give a woman the opportunity to talk to you about important matters, it is inevitable that you will be misadvised. The tenderness we feel for them inclines us to accept their worst reasoning, making us adopt their own point of view, and their natural weakness always makes them follow the wrong course of action]. Mémoires pour l'année 1667, cited in Marie-Odile Sweetser, ‘Les femmes et le pouvoir dans le théâtre cornélien’, in Pierre Corneille (Paris: PUF, 1985), pp. 605-14 (p. 606, n. 4).

14. François Du Soucy, sieur de Gerzan, Le Triomphe des Dames (Paris: chez l'autheur, 1646), pp. 143-5. See Carolyn Lougee, Le Paradis des Femmes: Women, Salons and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 48-9.

15. I use the idea of discursive elements as defined by Foucault in his conception of discourse: ‘We must conceive discourse as a series of discontinuous segments whose tactical function is neither uniform nor stable. To be more precise, we must not imagine a world of discourse divided between accepted discourse and excluded discourse, or between the dominant discourse and the dominated one; but as a multiplicity of discursive elements that can come into play in various strategies. It is this distribution that we must reconstruct’. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Vol. 1, trans. by Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1978), p. 100.

16. Harriet Allentuch, ‘Reflections on Women in the Theater of Corneille’, Kentucky Romance Quarterly, 21 (1974), 97-111 (p. 97).

17. For a critical bibliography of the play, see Jean Racine, Alexandre le Grand, ed. Michael Hawcroft and Valerie Worth (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1990), pp. xlvi-l.

18. See for example ll. 185, 803, 1030, 1125. This association is of course further underpinned by a general contemporary move away from a military ethic towards one of pacifism, or away from heroism towards tendresse and galanterie.

19. Les beaux yeux d'Axiane, ennemis de la Paix,
    Contre votre Alexandre arment tous leurs attraits.
    Reine de tous les cœurs, elle met tout en armes,
    Pour cette liberté que détruisent ses charmes,
    Elle rougit des fers qu'on apporte en ces lieux,
    Et n'y saurait souffrir de tyrans que ses yeux.

    (Alexandre le Grand, Act I. 1, ll. 71-6)

20. C'est vous, je m'en souviens, dont les puissants appas,
    Excitaient tous nos Rois, les traînaient aux combats.

    (Alexandre le Grand, Act II. 5, ll. 651-2)

21. See also Act IV. 3, ll. 1225-8.

22. This is not to say of course that Racine necessarily applauds a military, or violent, ethic. On the contrary, as Timothy Reiss has shown, throughout Alexandre le Grand, Racine continually highlights the devastation and destruction inherent in any such ethic. See Reiss, ‘Banditry, Madness and Sovereign Authority’, passim.

23. Ibid., p. 123.

24.                                         Et c'est cette tranquillité
    Dont je ne puis souffrir l'indigne sûreté.
    Quoi lorsque mes sujets, mourant dans une plaine,
    Sur les pas de Porus combattent pour leur Reine,
    Qu'au prix de tout leur sang ils signalent leur foi,
    Que le cri des mourants vient presque jusqu'à moi,
    On me parle de Paix, et le Camp de Taxile
    Garde dans ce désordre une assiette tranquille.

    (Alexandre le Grand, Act III. 1, 703-10)

    She later adds ‘Ab de ce camp Madame, ouvrez-moi la barrière …’ (728).

25. See Reiss, ‘Banditry, Madness and Sovereign Authority’, pp. 125-8 on the idea of false glory within the play.

26. See also Act IV. 3, ll. 1226-7, where she incites Taxile to avenge their freedom and to defend their respective thrones.

27. It has often been remarked upon that there are no confidentes in Alexandre le Grand, and that it can be therefore more difficult than usual for spectators to pinpoint the characters' motivations or feelings (see for example Hawcroft and Worth (eds), Alexandre le Grand, pp. xxvi-xxvii). Racine then seems to attach a certain importance to Axiane by according her the only lengthy monologue in the play (48 lines), which does allow us to a certain extent to understand her character better. (The only other monologue in the play is Taxile's brief eight lines in Act IV. 5, which likewise nuances his character, since it is the first time we see him stirred to action.)

28. This recurrent theme in exclusionist discourse was adhered to among others by Bossuet: ‘le peuple de Dieu n'admettoit pas à la succession le sexe qui est né pour obéir; et la dignité des maisons régnantes ne paraissoit pas assez soutenue en la personne d'une femme, qui après tout était obligée de se faire un maître en se mariant’ [Christian people did not admit to rights of succession members of the sex which is born to obey; and the dignity of ruling houses did not appear to be adequately maintained in the person of a woman, who, in the last analysis, had to recognize a master when she married], Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Politique tirée des propres paroles de l'Ecriture sainte ed. Jacques Le Brun (Geneva: Droz, 1967), p. 58.

29. See ll. 1429-70; while this passage (omitted in later editions) is somewhat ambivalent, her seeming acceptance (l. 1447) is undermined by the threats and challenges with which it is followed; furthermore since it becomes clear that she does not save Porus, it would seem that she adheres to her refusal.

30. Menke, ‘The Widow Who Would Be Queen’, p. 205.

31. According to Saint-Évremond for example, ‘Il paraît qu'il a voulu donner une plus grande idée de Porus que d'Alexandre.’ (Saint-Évremond, Dissertation sur le grand Alexandre, in Forestier, Œuvres, pp. 183-9 (p. 183)). For Racine's reply, see Forestier, Œuvres, p. 126.

32. For Cléofile's role, see Philippe Lacroix, ‘Le langage de l'amour dans Alexandre le Grand de Racine’, XVII^e siècle, 146 (1985), 57-67 (p. 61), and Reiss, ‘Banditry, Madness and Sovereign Authority’.

33. Forestier, Œuvres, p. 26.

34. Reine, sors, a-t-il dit, de ce lieu redoutable,
    D'où te bannit ton sexe et ton impiété.

    (Athalie, Act III. 3, ll. 404-5)

35. Bruneau concurs with this idea when she indicates how Racine undermines the biblical version of the story by allowing Athalie to give her own account, and by representing her opposing clan as ‘méchant, injuste, fanatique et contradictoire’. See Marie-Florine Bruneau, Racine, le jansénisme et la modernité (Paris: Corti, 1986), pp. 125-7. See also Zimmermann (La Liberté et le Destin, pp. 137-9), who highlights the unease within the play, and the similarities between the orders which Joad and Athalie represent.

36. Vincent Grégoire, ‘La femme et la loi dans la perspective des pièces bibliques raciniennes représentées à Saint-Cyr’, XVII^e siècle, 179 (1993), 323-36 (p. 323).

37. Bruneau Racine, le jansénisme et la modernité, p. 130.

38. As Bossuet comments, ‘[Des] empires quoique violents, injustes et tyranniques d'abord, par la suite des temps et par le consentement des peuples peuvent devenir légitimes.’ [Empires which are violent, unjust and tyrannical initially, can in time and with the consent of the people become legitimate] (Politique tirée des propres paroles, p. 50).

39. The situation is of course made more complex by the sacred context of the play. On legitimacy see Zimmermann, La Liberté et le Destin, pp. 40-1.

40. For a similar analysis of Athalie as monarch see Bruneau (Racine, le jansénisme et la modernité, pp. 127-31) and Jean-Marie Apostolidès Le Prince sacrifié (Paris: Minuit, 1985), p. 128. It is also noteworthy that the idea of Athalie as a successful sovereign has no foundation in the Bible and is an invention of Racine's.

41. This is, of course, on one level, part of the divine order since Joad has prayed to God that she become confused and imprudent (ll. 300-4).

42. For a more negative reading of Athalie's arrival in the temple, see Dubu's chapter ‘La Venue au Temple’ in Jean Dubu, Racine aux miroirs (Paris: SEDES, 1992), pp. 199-406.

43. Grégoire, ‘La femme et la loi’, p. 333. See also Zimmermann, La Liberté et le Destin, p. 143.

44. Racine often reminds us of Mathan's role in Athalie's downfall. Referred to as ‘plus méchant qu'Athalie’ (l. 36), it is he who has put it into her head in the first place that there is a treasure (ll. 49-50), whose plotting it is feared by Joad (l. 1097), whose lies to the queen incite her to take action (ll. 888-94).

45. Bruneau, Racine, le jansénisme et la modernité, p. 135.

46. Grégoire, ‘La femme et la loi’, p. 336.

47. Jean Dubu, Racine aux miroirs, p. 388.