"Oresteia" and Clytaemnestra and Electra

In the Oresteia, Clytaemnestra and Electra, mother and daughter, have very different sexual natures, though both women are devoted to revenge. Clytaemnestra takes revenge on her husband, Agamemnon, not simply because she has a lover but because Agamemnon had killed her first husband and her child. Her vengeance is thus bound with her sexuality and with the way Agamemnon had forced her to submit to him. Electra is non-sexual in her behavior--though she has been married off by her mother, she does not consummate the marriage. Her entire being is shaped to revenge for the death of her father, and she torments her brother until he fulfills what she sees as his duty and kills Aegisthus and Clytaemnestra.

It is the Watchman who first speaks of Clytaemnestra and does so in a way that shows he believes all is right with her and her husband. At the same time, he sees her as somewhat tyrannical given that she has had him lying on the roof for a year waiting to see the beacon light:

I say the news aloud to Agamemnon's queen,

that she may rise up from her bed of state with speed

to raise the rumor of gladness welcoming this beacon (35-36).

The Watchman would welcome Agamemnon home, for he believes the kingdom is not being ruled as it should be. The Chorus of elders also yearns for the return of the king and would have followed him into battle had they not been too old. They also express the idea that certain events are inevitable, and though they do not say so here, this app

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Chorus, which here expresses the feeling that something is about to happen, referring to a "persistent fear" and a "strain unwanted" (65). Clytaemnestra tells the Chorus a few minutes later that she has no time to waste on this girl, and it might see that the wife is merely jealous. However, her sexuality has become bound with Aegisthus during her husband's absence, and both have reason to hate Agamemnon and to seek revenge. Her sexual nature has thus become enmeshed with the very idea of revenge, leading her to help Aegisthus kill her husband: No shame, I think, in the death given this man. And did he not first of all in this house wreak death by treachery? (84). She refers to the death of her daughter, Iphigeneia, sacrificed by Agamemnon some years earlier, as one of the reasons she is seeking revenge: The flower of this man's love and mine, Iphigeneia of the tears He dealt with even as he has suffered (84-85). Her jealousy over Cassandra is another reason she gives, though she has in fact betrayed Agamemnon with Aegisthus in his absence and so has already transferred her love to another. She also sees herself as the instrument of revenge on the whole house of Atreus, meaning she is the instrument for the destructi

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