thoughts on electra as a character? :)
Aeschylus’ Electra appears only in one scene in one play of his great Oresteia trilogy. She is the Athenian ideal of a “good” woman - she stays indoors, in the private female sphere; she leaves the house only in the context of performing her religious duties (the only aspect of public life in which women played a prominent role); she is loyal to the men in her family (her father and her brother), and she prays to be more chaste than her gender-role transgressing mother. After performing her religious rites at her father’s tomb, and welcoming home his male heir, she retreats back into the house at the command of her brother, and we never see or hear from her again.
Sophocles’ Electra refuses to stay inside the house. She sits at the palace doorway, lamenting her father and the wickedness of her mother and her mother’s lover for all to hear. This is the only form of resistance she can muster - her brother has not answered her letters for help, and her sister refuses to rise up with her against the usurpers. Her voice is the only weapon she possesses, and she refuses to be silent - despite being deemed shrill and hysterical by both her enemies and her allies alike. She is like Antigone, in some ways - raw, stubborn, relentlessly demanding justice from those in power. But the weight of her suffering and the passivity inflicted on her turn her cold and cruel. In a twist of tragic irony, she ends the play as Creon, rather than Antigone - murderous and sacrilegious. But while Creon finally sees the light and recognizes his folly, Electra does not.
Euripides’ Electra, like Sophocles’, is driven by a hatred of her mother. She is more active than both her Aeschylean and Sophoclean counterparts, taking part in the matricide along with Orestes - her hand is on the sword as they plunge it into their mother’s heart. This is bold, too bold - Apollo’s command applied only to Orestes, not to her (but then, Orestes in this play is weak and Electra is his backbone). Unlike Sophocles’ Electra, Euripides’ Electra immediately recognizes the horror of what she’s done, the pollution that now contaminates her. She is filled with remorse. Suffering is knowledge. She suffers, and thus comes closer to understanding the tragedy of the human condition.
