THE STORY SO FAR: Agamemnon was a Greek general during the Trojan War, who sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia in order to win the gods’ favor. Clytaemestra, who had been told that Iphigenia was to be married, took a lover in her grief and avenged her daughter’s murder by killing her husband. Orestes, with the involvement of his sister Electra, murdered his mother to avenge his father. The gods frown on the murder of blood kin and sent the Furies after him to avenge the murder of mother by child.
Euripides’ Electra is a satirical tragedy that mocks the idealized characters and implausible elements of traditional myth and Aeschylus’ plays (The Orestia). This play is an answer for those bothersome details that do not make sense.
Electra is the only living daughter (if one accepts that Iphigenia was sacrificed) of Agamemnon and Clytaemestra. In traditional myth and Aeschylus’ plays, she is the tragic figure made to suffer in her father’s absence, the noble figure bearing the burden of Aegisthus’ rule, the passive figure watching Orestes take revenge on her father’s killers. In Euripides’ Electra, she is not. Instead, she is the self-centered daughter achieving revenge by displaying herself in rags. She rejoices in her grief, singing and dancing when alone, so that everyone will know of Aegisthus’ cruelties to her. She rejects help from others to make her situation more horrible to the casual viewer. In short, she delights in her own hardships just to spite Aegisthus whose only business with her was to make sure her sons would be worthless. Also, Electra does not passively watch Orestes; she arranges for Clytaemestra to come to her home to perform a ritual and then urges Orestes when he falters in her murder.
Orestes is the hero of the story who is chosen by Apollo to avenge Agamemnon. In myth, he is the righteous grown son seeking revenge on the woman who only carried him and is, therefore, no blood relation to him, supposedly exempting him from the Furies’ rage. This Orestes isn’t the confident hero. Instead, he plans his deeds outside of the city, selecting a place where refuge from his stepfather’s bodyguards isn’t more than a quick dash away. He asks everyone how he should plan his revenge and then demands moment-by-moment details. Orestes also carries a bitter resentment for Apollo, saying that he had no right to demand him to kill his own mother: “A polluted demon spoke it in the shape of god” (line 979). This Orestes is conflicted by his own morals and chooses to concentrate more on Aegisthus than Clytaemestra.
As for the anagnorosis scene, Euripides greatly mocks the scene in the Libation Bearers by Aeschylus. Whereas Electra immediately chooses to believe in things that don’t make sense, this Electra does not. When the Old Man accepts the presence of Orestes by way of hair and footprints, Electra quite logically rejects every piece of evidence: the hair of a royal prince born to fight cannot match that of a pampered princess; a grown man’s footprint cannot match that of a maiden. Instead, recognition comes from a scar (a device used in similar scenes by older playwrights).
Both Electra and Orestes do not live up to the image set before them by their myths. Instead, they are much more human in their pettiness and weakness. And those implausible details are forced to make more sense, even though a scar truly isn’t a sufficient way to recognize a person one hasn’t seen in ten years.
