Zoe Kelly - 25116872
How and why do Aeschylus and Sophocles engage with traditional ancient Greek
gender stereotypes using female characters in their respective tragedies, Agamemnon
and Electra?
In Athenian society, men were expected to be powerful, authoritative and honourable, while
women were expected to show obedience and subservience to the men in their lives.
Traditionally, Athens was a misogynistic society, evidenced, for example, in Aristotle’s
extensive writings on the shortfalls of women, and the intrinsic differences between them and
men.12 Aeschylus, however, in his play Agamemnon, writes Clytemnestra as a strong female
character right from the beginning of the narrative; through her he challenges ancient gender
roles and explores the inversion of stereotypical traits from male to female characters.
Similarly, Sophocles’ writes his titular character Electra in his retelling of the Orestes myth
as a contradiction to expectations for female behaviour. He presents a few different
perspectives on how women could subvert societal expectations. This essay will offer a
critical comparison of the methods each author exacts to raise these arguments and conclude
with a consideration of what their motivations for doing so may have been.
Each of the two plays deals with a part of the Orestes myth, narrating the events that
happen to the House of Atreus after the end of the Trojan War. Aeschylus recounts the
homecoming and murder of Agamemnon at Clytemnestra’s hands, and Sophocles’ Electra
takes on the following narrative of Agamemnon’s daughter, Electra, avenging her father’s
death by murdering her mother Clytemnestra. Both plays deal with key themes of revenge
and justice for familial murders while constructing new viewpoints on the role of the female
characters in this storyline. Sophocles, we know, was born four years after the presentation of
Aeschylus’ first play and would have been a spectator of the older poet’s work for roughly 20
years of his adult life.3 There can be no doubt that Sophocles was intimately familiar with
Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy, or that he was influenced by it. Produced in 458BC the Oresteia
consisted of Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers, Eumenides and the satyr-play Proteus.4 Though
1
Aristotle, Politics, 1260a, 1277b.
Aristotle, History of Animals, 608b.
3
John Jones, ‘Sophocles’ Electra: The Orestes Myth Rephrased’, in Harold Bloom (ed.), Modern Critical
Views: Sophocles, (New York, 1990), 33-48, pg. 33.
4
Aeschylus, Alan H. Sommerstein (trans.), Oresteia, Agamemnon, pg. 3.
2
we are unable to specifically date the original performance of Electra, we know it was written
pre-415BC, during the first half of the Peloponnesian War.5
One key method Aeschylus utilises to show Clytemnestra’s rejection of feminine
societal expectations throughout Agamemnon is the concept of gendered speech. The majority
of Clytemnestra’s speech allows Aeschylus to demonstrate how she moves into the sphere of
masculinity because she has the ability to perform in a way fundamentally expected from
men. He uses her language to recall imagery of war and battle. Her primary speech to her
returned husband includes language such as ‘terrible trial’ (861), ‘wounds’ ( 865), ‘seized’
and ‘held by force’ (874), ‘enduring’ (893) and ‘defeat’ (943), all bringing to the audience
members’ minds scenes of conflict, arguably many of them may have experienced these
themselves – Athens at this time had been engaged in war with the Peloponnesians since
431BC, so conflict was an easily appropriate contextual reference.6 Utilising this semantic
field (one relevant to an area of society undeniably dominated by men) asserts Clytemnestra’s
authority and demonstrates her existence and knowledge outside of traditionally feminine
subjects. Her embodiment of ‘masculine’ traits is shown further purely in the quantity of her
speech; she dominates the narrative both in driving the plot and in how much she actually
speaks on-stage. She often delivers long-winded speeches and ends up with more dialogue
than Agamemnon does as the titular character. Aeschylus has Agamemnon point this out
himself, telling Clytemnestra that her speech was ‘stretched out to a great length’ (915),
directing the audience specifically to consider how frequently she speaks and the stark
contrast this highlighted to women’s real-life roles. The stichomythia in lines 931-943 puts
pressure and aggression onto Agamemnon which allows Clytemnestra to dominate the
conversation.
In addition to Clytemnestra pushing her masculinity through her own speech,
Aeschylus also highlights her deferral from the expected female behaviour by using the
Chorus to emphasize the masculine features she has adopted. Collectively they assert that she
has ‘spoken wisely, like a sensible man’ (301), note their surprise at the ‘arrogance’ of her
‘boastful words’ (1399), and warn her that her ‘words are very proud’ (1426), traits typically
praised in men, yet condemned for this female character. The Chorus are constantly calling
her femininity into question, but Clytemnestra uses those social expectations to help her get
her way. She demonstrates an awareness of the female gender norms the rest of the characters
5
6
P. E. Easterling (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, (Cambridge, 2010), pg. 353.
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War.
think she should be sticking to and uses or discards them to her own advantage and of her
own volition. Nearly every male character who makes an appearance has an opinion and
criticises her for exhibiting qualities they would associate with their male peers, but in the
end, these exact qualities – her decisiveness, aggression, and strong desire for justice – are
what allow her to carry out her revenge plot.
While Clytemnestra’s assumption of masculine ideals represents a complete exchange
of traditional Greek gender roles, Sophocles’ characterisation of Electra’s role offers a more
complex query of traditional values and their gendered roles. With his characterisations of
Electra and her sister Chrysothemis, Sophocles explores several societal perspectives.
Chrysothemis represents the upholding of traditional womanly virtues, while Electra
demonstrates the breaking out of them. Sophocles’ representation of Electra going against the
behaviours expected of her is not as straightforward as Aeschylus’ portrayal of Clytemnestra
outrightly rejecting femininity, his Electra is an interesting mix of aggressive yet motherly,
emotional yet rational in her thoughts and actions. Wheeler concludes that ‘if Aeschylus’
Clytemnestra questions Athenian prejudices, Sophocles’ Electra makes them fight each
other’.7
Sophocles’ Electra demonstrates lament and mourning as her driving motivators.
Ritual mourning was a key role for ancient Greek women and was deeply rooted in the ideals
of femininity.8 Electra’s intense mourning highlights a comparison between Aeschylus’
Clytemnestra’s adoption of aggressive masculinity and Electra’s use of a traditionally
feminine role to defy her family’s and the audience’s expectations of her.9 However, she
defies Clytemnestra and Aegisthus in completely unwomanly ways too – despite being well
over 20 years old at this point in the narrative, she remains unmarried, childless and chooses
to dress completely the opposite of how a woman of her status was expected to.10 Electra
rebels with everything in her power while staying technically within the virtues of
womanhood, unlike Clytemnestra in Agamemnon who crosses the line completely.11
Clytemnestra’s deviation from patriarchal expectations runs beyond her verbal role in
the play. Throughout Agamemnon we see her moving further into the public sphere and
Graham Wheeler, ‘Gender and Transgression in Sophocles’ “Electra”’, The Classical Quarterly 50.2,
(Cambridge, 2003), 377-388, pg. 383.
8
Helene P. Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, (2001), pg. 159.
9
Virginia M. Lewis, ‘Gendered Speech in Sophocles' Electra’, Phoenix 69.3-4 (2015), pg. 232.
10
Sophocles, Electra, 164-5, 186-192.
11
Thomas M. Woodard, ‘Electra by Sophocles: The Dialectical Design’, Harvard Studies in Classical
Philology, 68, (1964), pg. 181.
7
physically inserting herself in traditionally non-feminine areas. Greek society would have
expected the wives and women of a household to keep it running while their masters were
away at war, but Clytemnestra takes this to a completely new level. Before she even speaks,
she literally crosses the threshold between private and public – she ‘appeared at the palace
door’ as the Chorus address her directly in line 260. Her primary move outside of the
feminine domestic space into public outspokenness initiates a key theme of her ability to
invade the masculine ‘outside’ with the ‘feminine’ inside without challenge. We see a
physical representation of this in the famous so-called ‘Carpet Scene’, in which Agamemnon
has returned to the palace in a carriage and Clytemnestra is convincing him to walk into the
house along tapestries she has placed along the ground (908-960). By bringing the tapestries
outside for Agamemnon to walk on, Clytemnestra shows that both the in and out-side of the
household are under her control. While there is an argument to be made that this simply
represents her subordination to her husband, the events that transpire after this scene show
that this is her clearly asserting her influence on-stage. The imposing and aggressive language
surrounding this scene allows Aeschylus to turn a symbol of her domesticity into a cleverly
used weapon against Agamemnon. Moreover, we see that the domestic setting becomes a
pseudo-battlefield further on when Clytemnestra kills inside the house, again taking a
traditional restriction for women and turning it into a demonstration of power.
In contrast, Edith Hall notes the continued commentary throughout Electra that
Aegisthus should be presiding over his stepdaughter to keep her in a ‘woman’s rightful place:
indoors, unseen and unheard’.12 Clytemnestra’s house becomes her weapon and symbol of
her grasp on masculine power, whereas Electra views her home as a prison, where her actions
are restricted by male authority figures.13
Clytemnestra disrupts the conventional male/female, husband/wife dynamic that she
is expected to follow, both with Agamemnon and in her speeches with Aegisthus at the end
of the play. In alignment with her own masculinization, she applies to the two of them
conditions that would have been typically accepted for women at the time. In her first speech,
spoken in public, she does not address Agamemnon directly or by name, referring to him
simply as ‘my husband’ (855) and ‘this man’ (860,864). She emasculates his character by
12
Sophocles, H. D. F. Kitto (trans.), Edith Hall (ed.), Antigone, Oedipus the King, Electra, (New York, 1994),
pg. xxiii.
13
Sophocles, Electra, 516-9.
relegating female traditions onto him – it was not common or proper for women to be named
or acknowledged in public. 14 Her speech to Aegisthus and the Chorus from line 1654
eliminates their own agency and effectively brings the entire play to a close. Aeschylus has
created a complete subversion of the traditional Greek societal makeup and demonstrated
through her ability to control each male character’s actions that this woman is now in
complete control of the narrative.
Sophocles similarly presents an argument against female subordination by having his
Electra drive the plot of the play too. Electra defies domestic expectations by taking a leading
role in the play and actively seeking justice for her father’s murder. She is deeply affected by
the loss of her father and her mother’s role in his death and, as a result, is not content to
simply accept her lot in life. Instead, she speaks out against her mother and stepfather,
publicly mourning her father’s death and expressing her hatred for his killers. Actively
seeking allies and encouraging her brother to take action against their father’s killers, Electra
demonstrates a physical unconfinement despite her stepfather’s and sister’s efforts to mollify
and control her. 15 Not only is she involving herself in political and public affairs, like
Clytemnestra but through alternative means, but Electra is also taking a leading role in the
drive for revenge. Her strong will and determination to achieve her goals, despite the societal
expectations of her gender, makes her a powerful and unconventional character which allows
Sophocles to critique the societal order which confines women to certain roles and suppresses
their voice.
Having conducted this investigation into the ways in which each author uses their
female characters to debate and challenge female stereotypes, we are left with the question of
why: why have Sophocles and Aeschylus written plays centred around female characters who
subvert their societal gendered expectations? Aeschylus presents masculinity as the medium
through which previously silenced women can gain power and agency to carry out their own
plans. In actuality, women in both Aeschylean and Sophoclean Athens were severely
excluded from public discourse, excluded from political institutions and stayed under the
legal guardianship of a man, usually their father or husband, throughout their entire lives.16
‘Respectable women of the citizen class were married at an early age’ and the most
14
R. Just, Women in Athenian Law and Life, (London, 1989), referenced in: Sophocles, H. D. F. Kitto (trans.),
Edith Hall (ed.), Antigone, Oedipus the King, Electra, (New York, 1994), pg. xxvii.
15
Wheeler, ‘Gender and Transgression”, pg. 379.
16
Just, Women in Athenian Law and Life, referenced in: Sophocles, Kitto (trans.), Hall (ed.), Electra, pg. xxvii.
exemplary wives were those that ‘remained at home as inconspicuously as possible’.17 The
character readings could be taken as moral warnings the authors wish to teach to their
audience. Both Clytemnestra and Electra are ultimately killed for their actions, and their
deaths could be viewed as a punishment for breaking the conventions of femininity in
Athenian society. Are the authors simply showcasing that women should know their place
and the natural order should not be subverted?
Conversely, I would like to conclude that each author challenges ancient Greek
female gender stereotypes as an opportunity to explore an alternative commentary on the
exercise of political power. The fictional representatives of people generally oppressed in
ancient Greek society are often permitted to address the public in theatre as they never could
in reality.18 On stage, wives (like Clytemnestra) can exhibit control over their husband’s
contrary to the standard domestic hierarchy, and children can defy their parental figures’
authority. However, they only do so to challenge a commonly accepted norm – ‘issues of
power can be made more complicated and explored more deeply on the political stage than in
a domestic context’.19 Clytemnestra as a character offers one alternative commentary on
gender and social roles, while Electra allows for more of a debate with the audience in
offering up several perspectives without necessarily pushing a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ one. Theatre
is ideally suited to offering mor than one critical perspective at a time due to the nature of
different views being explored in each individual character. Following this, audience
members can adopt multiple perspectives, in a simple physical way: viewing is not mediated
by a director’s exact chosen camera shot like modern TV or cinema, but they can instead
observe who they want when they want and form their own independent thought.20
17
Sophocles, Kitto (trans.), Hall (ed.), Electra, pg. xxvii.
Edith Hall, ‘The Sociology of Athenian Tragedy’, in Easterling (ed.) Companion to Greek Tragedy, pg. 93.
19
D. M. Carter, The Politics of Greek Tragedy, (Bristol, 2007), pg. 68.
20
Mark Griffith, ‘Brilliant Dynasts: power and Politics in the Oresteia’, Classical Antiquity 14, (1985),62-129,
pg. 73, referenced in: Carter, Politics of Greek Tragedy, pg. 45.
18
Bibliography:
Aeschylus, Agamemnon.
Aristotle, History of Animals.
Aristotle, Politics.
Sophocles, Electra.
Thucydides, A History of the Peloponnesian War.
Carter, D. M., The Politics of Greek Tragedy, (Bristol, 2007).
Easterling, P. E. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, (Cambridge, 2010).
Foley, Helene P., Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, (2001).
Jones, John, ‘Sophocles’ Electra: The Orestes Myth Rephrased’, in Bloom, Harold (ed.),
Modern Critical Views: Sophocles, (New York, 1990), 33-48.
Lewis, Virginia M., ‘Gendered Speech in Sophocles' Electra’, Phoenix 69.3-4 (2015).
Wheeler, Graham, ‘Gender and Transgression in Sophocles’ “Electra”’, The Classical
Quarterly 50.2, (Cambridge, 2003), 377-388,
Woodard, Thomas M., ‘Electra by Sophocles: The Dialectical Design’, Harvard Studies in
Classical Philology, 68, (1964).