Alcestis Symbol Analysis

Alcestis, Alicia Berenson’s self-portrait based on Euripides’s play of the same name, symbolizes the great pain that can result from betrayal—and the impossibility of putting that pain into words. In the play, an ancient Greek tragedy, Alcestis’s husband Admetus willingly sacrifices her life to protect his own. Alcestis is ultimately able to return from the underworld, but when she revives, her anger and hurt are so great that she never speaks again. In the novel, Alicia sees a production of the tragic play a few days before her husband Gabriel offers up her life to spare himself; in the aftermath of that cruelty, Alicia kills Gabriel and remains completely silent for more than six years following his death. Her only comment is the Alcestis, in which she depicts herself with mouth silently open, brush in hand.

Paradoxically, though, while Alicia uses Alcestis as a model for her own self-imposed muteness, she also uses the play as a method of communication. Jean-Felix Martin, Alicia’s friend and gallerist, argues that “it’s a painting about silence”; read the play the painting is based on, he suggests to Alicia’s therapist Theo, and “then you’ll understand.” Thus even as Alicia turns to Euripides’s Alcestis for a lesson in silence, her own painting is a way of letting people “understand” her, showing them the reasoning—the unbearable betrayal—behind her lack of speech.