Sticks and Stones

For those of you not familiar with Aeschylus’ Oresteia (dubbed by Cambridge’s Professor Simon Goldhill the “finest work of literature ever”) or Sophocles’ Electra, and one would have thought that that included pretty much everyone, both concern the story of the House of Atreus, and I would like to talk about each writer’s interpretation of the story. The basic story is as follows:

King Agamemnon returns home from the Trojan War, only to have his head hacked off in the bath by his wife, Clytemnestra, who has since shacked up with his nemesis, Aegisthus, and who is still bitter about her husband’s murder of their daughter, Iphigenia. This act leaves daughters Electra and Chrysothemis in grief and misery, but they retain hope that their brother, the exiled Orestes, will return and rescue them. He does this, killing his mother and step-father in the process.

As is common in Greek literature, however, the two authors have their own interpretations of the common myth, and these idiosyncrasies reveal vastly different expositions of the main themes of the texts. What I would first like to examine is the presentations of the characters of Orestes and Electra, who are the two main revenge-seekers in the play.

Notably, Aeschylus named his play (trilogy, as it happens) after the male, masculine, male, manly, male archetypal hero, Orestes, while Sophocles’ play is named for the female character of Electra. Indeed, while Orestes is the main character for Aeschylus, in Sophocles version he is barely seen, sidelined to brief appearances at the beginning and end of the play, with pretty much non-stop Electra in between.

There are two more interesting notes to point out before we can investigate this properly. The first is Electra’s name, which in Greek means “unwedded”, or more precisely (and significantly), “unbedded”. This is important because a woman in Ancient Greece had virtually no rights, and was entirely dependent on male relatives - Electra’s father is dead, and her brother in exile, you will remember, and she has no husband. Thus she is largely powerless and entirely dependent on Orestes’ return.

The second relates to the latter translation of her name. Electra is a virgin. In the Greek world, it was not advisable to be a virgin (i.e. menstruating but not having had sex) for more than a few months. Electra has been a virgin for about 10 years. The Greeks believed that madness stemmed from women’s virginity, as the womb would go walkabouts. Seriously. It’s where we get the word “hysteria” from - compare to the word “hysterectomy”.

So, we are vividly aware that the main character of Sophocles’ play is a woman, unlike the Rambo-Orestes figure (a slight exaggeration, in fairness) that Aeschylus presents us with, familiar from the Odyssey. Indeed, according to Sophocles, when Electra thinks that her one hope, Orestes, is dead, and insists to her sister, Chrysothemis, that they achieve vengeance themselves, the rather more docile sister replies by reminding her that they are “women, not men”. Electra has imagined herself becoming a world-famous hero for enacting the male role as avenger, but Chrysothemis tries to bring her back down to earth by reminding her of her gender.

Aeschylus’ portrayal of Electra is a religious, tame, sad-but-not-insane girl, who shrinks away like a delicate flower while Orestes does the dirty work of slaughtering his mother and her lover. Contast that with Sophocles’ ranting, hysterical, bloodthirsty Electra, who stands outside the door, mocking her mother’s cry for hep and screaming one of the best lines in Greek drama: “Strike her a double blow!” (it’s much better in the Greek, trust me). She is desperate to be involved with the matricide, and comes as close as a woman could to plunging the blade in herself.

Now, it is generally silly to apply post-feminist literary theory to fifth century Athens, but one cannot help but feel that Sophocles has pointed his spotlight on Electra for a reason. Hers is the true suffering: while Orestes has the formal duty of avenging her father’s death, it is Electra who has had to live under the tyrannical rule of her own father’s killer, who sleeps with her mother and deprives her of freedom and, crucially, marriage. Orestes is only there because an oracle told him to do these things, whereas Electra is assured of her moral justice independently of the gods, and is desperate for revenge without their interference. Orestes has qualms about committing the atrocious act of matricide, even in Aeschylus’ heroic character, while Sophocles’ Electra never has a shadow of a doubt, and seems to relish the horrendous act.

In conclusion, Sophocles presents us with a radical retelling of the story by shifting the focus from the conventional male avenger to the frustrated female victim, unable to take any active measures to improve her situation. She is, in effect, astronomically more motivated (and, one might say, justified) for the murder, and yet is completely powerless, and having been the essence of the play, is relegated to the sidelines while the climax of the murders is enacted. For me, this makes it more tragic, and brings a distinctly fresh dimension to the story.