Through close readings of some Racinian tragedies, this study explores representations of motherhood at the intersection of classical Greek mythology and tragedy, Cartesian philosophy of passions, and seventeenth-century literary and cultural modes. It argues for the archaic roots of the tragic subject and of any absolute desire-in love, politics or religion. This critical work moves beyond literary analysis to grasp the relationship between the imaginary world of dramatic representation and the construction of subjectivity during the first decades of the reign of Louis XIV.