Electra by Sophocles

*contains spoilers*

We leave Thebes to return to Mycenae, the land of the sons of Atreus. Remember those guys? Agamemnon and Menelaus? The beginning of this particular play deals with events some fifteen years after Agamemnon returned from his victorious exploits in Troy and was slaughtered with a rusty double-edge axe at the hands of his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. Nice. Orestes, son of Agamemnon, is in exile and under the guardianship of a tutor in Delphi after having been snuck out by his devoted sister, the titular Electra, and guided into the safe hands of a family friend named Strophius. Orestes pledges a nice hard dose of revenge on behalf of his betrayed father, and so he sets out for Mycenae with his tutor, along with his good friend, Pylades, who makes no vocal contribution to the play whatsoever.

Electra, however, having hoisted her brother to safety after their father’s murder, now lives a life of misery and pain in Mycenae, and is constantly urged by her sister, Chrysothemis, to move on; “Why do you indulge / This vain resentment?...they rule, / I must submit, or lose all liberty.” Electra, conversely, cannot forget, and probably never will, and also hopes for Orestes’s return so that her father’s honour may be rightfully restored. Not soon after Chrysothemis’s urgent suggestions, however, in a heated discussion in which Electra is threatened with retribution on Aegisthus’s return from a spell away, we learn of Clytemnestra’s reasoning for her brutal actions fifteen long years ago; “This father of yours, whom you are always / mourning, / Had killed your sister”. Sophocles presents us with the notion that Agamemnon’s murder was not as simple as Clytemnestra displacing him on the throne with her lover and his cousin, Aegisthus. Instead, Clytemnestra’s slaughter of Agamemnon stemmed from a rage: it turns out that Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter, Iphigeneia, to the gods simply so that he and his men could travel safely to Troy to wage their war. This revelation serves to create an air of ambiguity to the prospect of Orestes and Electra seeking their revenge; revenge is not as simple as chopping down the wrongdoers in retribution – it is more about dealing with the multiple others that spring up to take their place and fight for their honour that creates the endless channels of new enemies. This is alluded to further as Aegisthus declares, as he is led back into the house (so that his murder happens ab scena); “This house of Atreus must, it seems, / behold / Death upon death, those now and those to come.” The explanatory notes in my edition (Oxford University Press, 2008) also refer to a curse made on Pelops, grandfather of Agamemnon, after his deceitful plot to win the hand of the Princess Hippodameia in a chariot race. Death upon death, indeed, as Aegisthus seems to imply that his own children will seek retribution for his death.

The real crux of this play, however, seems to lie in the determination of its central character in the face of society’s narrow perceptions of the power (or lack thereof) of the female. Orestes is, for a while, the play’s main concern – he is the exiled figure who returns for revenge, and is the hand by which Clytemnestra and Aegisthus finally meet their end – but it is Electra’s determination (again, Sophocles raises the question of human will) that sees the events through; “No / Long speech from him!...Kill him at once!” Electra’s determination, nevertheless, is supplemented by reinforcement from Orestes, as he reminds her that “women may not be too weak / To strike a blow”, and that Ares, the much-maligned god of war, “dwells in women too”.

After these three engaging plays from Sophocles, I went straight online to order some Aeschylus and Euripides – two of the three tragedians, of which Sophocles, obviously, is the third. Until then, I’ll have to make do with Virgil’s the Aeneid! Not bad, eh. Happy reading, y’all.