Electra, Electra

So, a little while ago, for fun, I read the Oresteia of Aeschylus. In general, I'm a big fan of Greek tragedy, but the Oresteia was really something else. The great thing about Greek tragedy is that you get this huge outpouring of emotion in a very short, condensed space. It took me about two hours to read the Oresteia, but when I was done I felt like someone had just punched me in the stomach. There's something so vital about Greek tragedy; it has a huge emotional impact. I mean, you just don't get that from other works of poetry or fiction.

Anyway, one of the reasons I liked the Oresteia is because you're never really sure whose side your on.  Obviously, Clytemnestra did a horrible thing by killing her husband, but her husband should not have killed her daughter. By the same token, two wrongs don't make a right; Orestes should not have killed his mother, Clytemnestra. Like, is this one messed up family or what? While most everyone sides with Orestes and Electra, I think that, in this case, justice is a little more complicated. So, to get a better sense of the story and as sort of a fun, end-of-summer treat, I decided to read Sophocles' Electra and Euripides' Electra and see how their stories match up to the Oresteia.

It's Electra vs. Electra.

In case you don't know, Electra was the daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. While Agamemnon was off at the Trojan war, Clytemnestra was shaking up with Aegisthus. So, when Agamemnon came home, Clytemnestra killed him (because she was angry with him because, firstly, he sacrificed their daughter to Apollo and, secondly, because he brought home another woman) and made Aegisthus the king. Electra (as in 'Electra Complex') wasn't too pleased about that.

Anyway, the first thing I noticed is that Sophocles' Electra is a lot more dramatic. Her grief is so exorbitant, so excessive. She feels everything so deeply - her mother's betrayal, her father's death, her own disfranchisement. There is so much immediacy to her anger, so much depth to her grief. It's overwhelming. Like, to quote Ron and Hermione in Harry Potter "'One person couldn't feel all that, they'd explode!' Said Ron. 'Just because you have the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have,' said Hermione.".

It's a great play, but everything about it is so intemperant, immoderate. It seems like Electra has just been sitting around for ten plus years whining. Even Chrysothemis, Electra's sister, tells her that she needs to take it down a notch. Chrysothemis isn't even in the Euripides version. However, aside from a few other plot differences, in Euripides play, Electra is a lot calmer and more resigned to her fate. In Sophocles' version, when Electra hears that Orestes is dead, she decides to kill Aegisthus herself. In Euripides' version, Electra says that if Orestes fails, she'll kill herself.

Another big difference is that in Sophocles' version of the play is that Electra and Orestes take no blame in the reader's eyes. You root for them all the way to the end. It seems that Orestes is in the right when he kills his mother. In Euripides' version, however, Orestes doesn't want to kill Clytemnestra. Electra convinces him that it is necessary and then, later, they both regret it. Clytemnestra is a far more symphathetic character in Euripides' play. One of her lines in particular really gets me " Yes, women can be foolish. I won’t deny it. But granting this, whenever a husband strays and abandons his marriage bed, the women wants to imitate his lead and find her own friend. Yet censure strikes hard at women, while men, the true agents of trouble, hear no reproach". The point is that Agamemnon wasn't a perfect person. And, in any case, killing Clytemnestra didn't solve anything.

I guess the long and the short of it is that there was no good way to resolve the story. Personally, I have to side with Clytemnestra, though I can't condone her treatment of her children. But I encourage you to read the plays yourself and see what you think. That always seems to happen in Greek drama though. I guess that's why they call it tragedy.

Just readin'