The device works well, building tension as mother and daughter both struggle with confinement, treachery, politics, and hair. This complex opening structure settles into chapters that alternate between the two women. This thwarted political assassination dissolves into Chapter 2, which introduces Jocasta at the same age, bundled off a generation earlier to wed Thebes’ fossilized King Laius. An orphan from age 5, the bookish 15-year-old leaves her reading nook only to be knifed by a stranger in the assumed safety of the palace. For Jocasta’s youngest child, Ismene, the menace arrives in the first chapter. Each woman has “the sense that someone was nearby, wishing her ill.” For Queen Jocasta of Thebes, it is the housekeeper Teresa, whose wickedness puts Mrs. This time, she puts a mother and daughter on center stage instead of Sophocles’ title characters in Oedipus Tyrannus and Antigone. As she did with her psychological thriller, The Furies (2014), Haynes dives straight for Sophocles’ monumental plays. Two women, two Greek tragedies, one modern revamping.īritish classicist Haynes writes a rejoinder-in fiction-to the near muteness of women in ancient Western texts.
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