iPaulina

One play I have loved for a long time is Euripides’ version of Electra; specifically, I have been interested the struggles of Electra’s mother, Clytemnestra, whom Electra and her brother Orestes eventually murder. The basic plot of the play is that Electra is hell-bent on avenging her father Agamemnon’s death by killing her mother and her mother’s lover, Aegisthus. (Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon because he sacrificed their elder daughter Iphigenia to the gods in order to get wind for the journey to Troy.) Electra has no sympathy for her mother, which leads her to pressure her brother into committing matricide. The two women finally meet towards the end of the play, in a heated exchange between mother and daughter. Euripides’ representation of these two characters could not only be deemed subversive by a modern audience, but also blurs the lines between ‘good’ and ‘evil’.

To understand this, it is important to compare Euripides’ retelling of this story to the more popular and famous version by Sophocles. Sophocles’ version is set in the palace of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, where Electra feels alone and unfairly treated by her mother and stepfather, who are depicted as cruel and uncaring. She spends much of the play waiting for her brother to return from his exile, and it is Orestes who plans and executes the two murders. In contrast, Euripides’ Electra has been removed from her role as princess and married off to a peasant man, moving the events of the play to a rural farmstead. While she still waits for her brother before enacting her revenge, once the siblings are reunited Electra is the one who is hard in her resolve and Orestes is the weak-willed one who needs to be pushed; similarly, in the end, it is Electra who holds the dagger with her brother to murder her mother.

Euripides’ Electra seems more progressive to a modern audience: she holds her ground and displays a power that her brother lacks. However, she is also given more faults than Sophocles’ Electra, as she is self-pitying and a bully to her brother. Meanwhile, his Clytemnestra is far more sympathetic to a modern audience: her struggles and the reasoning behind her actions are emphasised, as is her concern for her daughter’s well-being. Euripides’ depiction of these two women is more morally grey and realistic than the clear hero-villain depiction by Sophocles; in doing this, he subverts the Aristotelian tragic form.

Electra and Clytemnestra’s treatment at the end of the play could be used as evidence to suggest Euripides was a misogynist. Electra’s punishment for her crimes is to be married to Orestes’ friend Pylades and never return to Mycenae. While this may seem a kind punishment for matricide, Electra loses the voice she had at the beginning of the play: since the peasant man who should have been her husband refused to consummate their marriage, she had begun to work in a temple. Clytemnestra’s character is compelling and emotional, and her speech to Electra about double standards (with reference to her crime of adultery in comparison to her husband’s crime of murder) would still resonate with a modern female audience. However, the chorus, who generally brought societal beliefs into the play, tell her, ‘A wife ought in all things to accept / Her husband’s judgement, if she is wise’. The chorus thus perform the double standard that Clytemnestra has just highlighted, condemning her struggles as wrong; Electra is similarly unsympathetic to her mother. Although a progressive idea is being brought forward, this is done by the villain, and therefore would have limited grounds to be taken seriously.