Racine delays the action to emphasize the horror of Pyrrhus' impending death, or rather the consequences of that death. What chills the audience is not the murder, but its attendant circumstances. Hermione is not killing in cold blood. Her action is impulsive, unconsidered. She is dimly aware that she is about to make a mistake. So we tremble at the prospect of the moral catastrophe she is preparing for herself.
Anticipation blends with suspense. Hermione's anguish leads naturally to hesitation. Her decision, after all, is not irrevocable. A change of heart, one word to Orestes — and the tragedy can be averted. So, to the very end of the scene, the issue is unresolved.
However skillfully conceived, the real interest of the first scene is not dramatic effect but psychological insight. Hermione's soliloquy is the expression of a state of mind. In the most vivid terms, Racine does not explain — he recreates. He is not an analyst speaking of complexes but an artist reproducing the very language of passion. Hermione expresses her conflicting emotions — love, hate, humiliation, dread — in an incoherent flood of words. There are disorderly questions, reminiscences, abrupt resolutions, reservations — in short, the outpourings of a soul in agony.
