Tag Archives: Electra

Poor Electra!  A Life with Imaginary Men

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Long before I read Sophocles’s Electra, I knew about the Electra complex.  In Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, two of the main characters, Anna and Molly, chat about their psychoanalyst, whom they refer to as “Mother Sugar.”  “You’re Electra,” Mother Sugar would say. Anna and Molly smile wryly over the remembrance. At 14 or 15, did I intuit what it was? Was it part of the culture?  Did I associate it with the Oedipus complex, which really was part of the culture?  At any rate, I was prepared to read Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Sophocles’ Electra.

I am spellbound by Greek tragedy, but Sophocles’ Electra is less gripping than most of the plays.  Electra mopes around the tombs, lamenting the death of her father, Agamemnon, who was murdered by her mother, Clytemnestra, as vengeance for his murder of their daughter, Iphigenia, as a sacrifice to the gods. My analysis: Electra needed to see Mother Sugar!

Electra is also sad about the absence of her younger brother, Orestes, whom Electra personally sent away as a baby to save his life in case Clytemnestra and her consort Aegisthus decided to kill him.  She has not seen Orestes since.

It’s not that I want to say, “Cheer up, Electra.”  She has lived a life of trauma and agony.  She feels unsafe with women, clearly, because of her mother’s violence.  Electra brushes off her sister Chyrsothemis’s advice to stay quiet around the royal couple, since they are plotting against her, because she doesn’t care what happens to her, or at least she thinks she doesn’t.

Her longing for Orestes seems almost uncomfortably sexual. Consider the following passage (Sophocles II< The University of Chicago Press, vv. 162-66)

I await him always
sadly, unweariedly,
I who am past childbearing
past marriage
always to my own ruin.

Electra is obsessed with dead and missing men.  Whatever revenge she may fantasize about, she will take no action – unless a man tells her what to do.  She longs to murder her mother to avenge the death of her father, but Orestes shows up as the avenger. He has her check out the palace to make sure Clytemnestra is alone before he and his friend Pylades go in to commit the murder.  Ironically Electra is not present at her dream revenge on Clytemnestra, but she is there for the murder of her mother’s consort, Aegisthus, who tries to stall Orestes by talking.  And here Electra finally makes a decision, urging Orestes not to talk but to kill him quickly, and she follows the men into the bath.  Does she participate in the murder? Finally she has taken action, but will she regret it?

Because Electra is not Clytemnestra, or is she?  They are related, but no mother and daughter could be more different.   Clytemnestra loved power, and had no regrets. Electra has lived in her dreams and memories.  This killing will stay with her, but I cannot imagine this sad spinster thriving with the new memory of violence that will link her even more closely to her mother.

I must find my copy of Euripides’s Electra and see what that Electra has to say.

Matricide in Euripides’s “Electra”: Violence among Women

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Electra is a killer with no blood on her hands.  She is the heroine of three Greek tragedies, Aeschylus’s The Libation Bearers,  Sophocles’s Electra, and Euripides’s Electra. Euripides’s version is messy, unpolished, and practically unknown. But his dark characterization of Electra is unique: he portrays her as  a spoiled young woman, furious over losing princess status, banished from the palace by her mother’s lover and second husband, Aegisthus, who is afraid of a coup by Clytemnestra’s children.

 Euripides is fascinated by the psychology of wicked women:  there is Medea the witch, and of course Phaedra, the would-be adulteress. Some think the wickedest woman of all is Electra’s mother, Clytemnestra, who killed her husband Agamemnon and his concubine, Cassandra, on their return  from the Trojan War. It was a revenge killing: the appalling Agamemnon had murdered their oldest daughter Iphigenia when a seer said this evil deed would bring  favorable winds for sailing to Troy.

Clytemnestra fascinated  the Romans as much as the Greeks.  In Satire VI, the  Roman poet Juvenal inveighs against  Euripides’ evil heroines, especially Clytemnestra. He writes,

Every neighborhood will have a Clytemnestra.  There is only one difference;  Clytemnestra clumsily held a two-edged axe in her hands; the new Clytemnestras use a small  amount of a toad’s lung for poison.

Euripides is many-faceted, brilliant even at his worst, and the conception of the play is fascinating. His Electra is a fierce, sulky, class-conscious, angry young woman.  Though she is obsessed  with her father’s murder, she is also furious about having been “married” off to  a  mountain farmer who is so  kind and respectful that he has never touched her.  But Electra shows little kindness to him. At one point she tells him that he is of “small” worth.

Nor does Electra honor the gods much. She is not pleased with them.   And yet she doesn’t have to pay the price so often demanded in tragedy,  death and dishonor.

Electra complains:

No god hears the cries of the ill-fated,/ nor of my long-ago ruined father. /Alas, my exiled brother, who, now ruined,/the son of a famous father, lives in another land,/ unhappily wandering in slave quarters./ I myself live in the home of a laborer on a cliff,/ pining in my soul, / exiled from my father’s house. / My mother lives married / to another husband and shares a bloody bed .

After the laments of Electra and the chorus, there is action. Her brother Orestes breaks his exile and returns with his friend Pylades: Apollo has ordered him to clean up the House of Atreus (their violent family) with revenge killings. Electra is so excited that she plans matricide.

First Orestes kills Aegisthus while he is sacrificing to the gods -surely such a killing is blasphemy. Blood-stained Orestes is proud of this murder but even he has qualms about matricide. Electra invites her mother to the cottage, claiming she has just given birth.   Clytemnestra and Electra talk about the past, but Electra does not accept Clytemnestra’s regrets and explanations.

This scene reminds me a bit of dialogue in Doris Lessing’s novels. Her heroines, especially Martha Quest in the Children of Violence series, struggle to love their mothers. Is Euripides’s Electra the Martha Quest of Greek tragedy? And isn’t she also a child of violence?

Clytemnestra only too well understands her daughter’s bond with Agamemnon.”O child, by nature from birth you always loved your father, and this is still so.”

Matricide is the greatest of sins in the eyes of Euripides. Electra urges Orestes to go ahead when he tries to renege on his promise. And Orestes immediately regrets the killing. He laments: Clytemnestra is the woman who gave him birth, she bared her breast when he was killing her, he saw her pubic hair. Electra regrets, too. She regrets never having been able to love her mother. But she also wonders what kind of marriage she can make now, since she and Orestes must go into exile. Orestes says Pylades must marry Electra. And so this tragedy also has a bizarre marriage plot, if not a happy ending.

The translations from Euripides and Juvenal are mine.