The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, is the name given to the period in Europe during the 1700s when mankind was emerging from centuries of ignorance into a new age enlightened by reason, science, and respect for humanity. A way that these were implemented was through non-fictional stories written at the time. These stories were aimed to educate and elucidate people to think of their moral behavior and thinking. Stories like Phaedra, written by Jean Racine, and Gulliver's Travel, written by Jonathan Swift, were to instruct, to enlighten, and to make people think. Though the literature of this period was unrealistic the people of the Enlightenment revered the power of the mind to reason and to determine realities. These stories criticized the passions and reason that human hold. .
Passions and reason are the main, underlying theme for the play Phaedra. The play is about a kidnapped Athenian queen who has a strong passion for her stepson, Hyppolytus, the minute she laid her eyes on him; as she describes "when I, in Athens, met my haughty foe. I stared, I blushed, I paled, beholding him." Her forbidden love for him is so strong that it is killing her inside. Although she longed to be with him, her strong passion for him led her to harbor hatred against him and have him "be sent from home and father into banishment." But truthfully, she does not wish all that against him because she loves him. It is passion that causes her to do such thing. Many of the actions that the characters carried out in the play were all due to irrational decision that is caused by passions. Passion overwhelms reason. Another example where passion overwhelms reason is when Theseus condemned Hyppolytus to death because he though that Hyppolytus committed adultery with his wife, Phaedra. Although Hyppolytus denied it and told his side of the story, Theseus still condemned him. His lack of reason had caused his son to die an innocent death.