The story of Electra, as a participant in the ancient Greek myth of the curse of the House of Atreus, has fascinated dramatists from ancient times through the 20th Century. The curse is carried out in a continuous cycle of murders based largely on vengeance and justice that involves kinship killings. The shedding of kinship blood, however, even when ordained by the gods, is also a crime that must be punished, generation after generation. No solution exists except doom. This is precisely the situation Electra finds herself in. She must aid her brother Orestes in killing their mother Clytemnestra out of justified revenge for the killing of their father, Agememnon. (Another sister, Choephoroe, does not choose to take part). But Electra and Orestes must also be punished for killing their mother, a crime against nature. So those who are fated to carry on the ancestral curse find themselves in a double bind: theyÆre damned if they do, and theyÆre damned if they donÆt.
This paper will compare and contrast the treatment of Electra in the plays by Sophocles and Euripides. Also under discussion will be how the character of Electra has been portrayed by other writers such as Aeschylus, and modern American playwright Eugene OÆNeill. Issues under consideration are the mythographic content, emotional makeup, heroism and morality/ethics of the Electra plays.
While the dramatists under consideration in this paper adhere to the basic myth of Electra, their approaches differ as depicted in her level of participation; in some plays she is an active participant while in others she is just an accomplice. In AeschylusÆ Choephoroe, for example, Electra is a minor character; while in OÆNeillÆs Mourning Becomes Electra, and the Electras of Sophocles and Euripides, she is the major character. There is, however, an important difference in how the mythic traditions are used by these playwrights as the basis of their treatment of Electra. Ro...