5 - Heterosexual Bonding in the Fragments of Euripides

Summary

This chapter provides a thorough survey of the theme of heterosexual love in the fragments of Euripides, demonstrating how many of these plays – particularly Andromeda, Oedipus, Protesilaus and Antigone – offer glimpses of a different permutation of tragic marriage. These plays dramatise marital or premarital relationships in which the female partner could play an active and sometimes assertive role, and which, even when placed within dramatic contexts that render the union itself problematic, may be termed reciprocal and even romantic.The widening of the scope of enquiry demonstrates that the more positive portrayal of spousal bonds that we find in Euripides’ Helen is not an anomaly within the genre: tragic marriage did not always have to be portrayed a site of friction and disaster, and in fact it was some of Euripides’ most overtly erotic and romantic plays that left a distinctive mark on their original and later audiences.