max theodore's Reviews > Electra

feminism loss but i do love when women get to kill

not sure how to review this one despite having written an essay about it. how about: i am still an original oresteia stan through and through, but i love what euripides does with electra's character here. like sophocles, he lets her rage; unlike sophocles, he lets her take decisive action in her mother's murder, to a degree that is actually kind of horrifying (goading the brother she hasn't seen in years into murder by questioning his manhood? that's fucking cold). this entire play is pretty cold--euripides comes at the myth with a cynicism that blows away the other playwrights who have touched electra's story. this orestes and electra are a far cry from the pious grieving children of Libation Bearers--orestes kills aegisthus during a sacrifice, for fuck's sake--and the digs at aeschylus's scenes aren't subtle. that said, these characterizations are still deeply compelling: in their grief, in orestes' waver, in electra's fury, they ring as real people. and despite the pessimism of this play, it's powerful as hell.

also GOD i love clytemnestra in this play. i love how much depth and sympathy euripides gives her; i love that she's given nuance before she even comes on stage (described in one line as savage but protective of her daughter); i love that she's able to defend and represent herself in a speech that could be the precursor to emilia's speech in othello. electra says a lot of deeply misogynistic things in this play, and both she and her mother are punished for transgressing their social roles (this was the topic of my essay and the reason my original review was just the first line of this one). but euripides almost disproves his own misogyny by painting each of these women as a real, multilayered, morally gray person. clytemnestra's defense of her actions makes sense; so does electra's deeply wounded rage. and god, i love the moment of horror electra and orestes have after the murder. nobody's winning here, and nobody's right.

also also. i know i just said i love clytemnestra and i do but ELECTRA GETTING TO PHYSICALLY HELP ORESTES KILL THEIR MOTHER. WITH HER HAND ON THE SWORD. I LOVE WHEN WOMEN DO WRONGS!!!

translations read: paul roche, emily wilson
--> the latter translation is kind of unintentionally hysterical. i'm sorry. i know it comes out of a book where the goal is to translate as closely to verbatim as possible, so it can be used as a greek learning text, but tell me how i'm supposed to not laugh at "I will arrange the murder of my mother." // "That's great!"

notable lines:
"He hopes, but helplessly; an exile's weak." (Wilson, line 352)
"ELECTRA: Let me die, so long as I kill my mother." (Roche)
"OLD MAN: She'll come right to your door, right to your house.
ELECTRA: From here, it's just a little step to Hades." (Wilson, lines 661-2)
"ORESTES: I am only the pawn of fate and heaven." (Roche) (ouch, talk about an orestes theme)
"ELECTRA: Look, I'll put the cloth around her, // our unkind kin, the enemy we loved." (Wilson, 1230-1)

and, of course, the thesis:
"A single ancestral curse has ruined you both." (Roche)

🎵Seventeen—MARINA🎵