The Complete Plays of Jean Racine. Jean Racine

cruelty” (Barthes, 133). While Joash may not actually act on Athaliah’s sardonic suggestion “that he should plant a dagger in my breast” (V.vi.38) and, by doing so, vindicate her dream-vision of him stabbing her through the heart, we may infer that this boy — pious pupil of his paternal pedagogue that he is — would wholeheartedly approve of Jehoiada’s order to “have Athaliah slaughtered like an animal” (Turnell, 308). For a contemporary audience, the indoctrination of such values at so early an age, and the resultant arrogance and religious chauvinism, can only be an unsettling phenomenon.

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