Euripides: ‘Electra’

 Sophocles’ Electra was tragic. As Professor H.D.F. Kitto put it, “she is typical of one aspect of the human tragedy, in that circumstances combine with one element in her character to ruin what is conspicuously admirable in the rest of it.”

She’s just like one of us. But that one flaw, combined with unusual circumstances, brought her down.

Euripides’ Electra is no such person. She’s terrifying — “fantastic in her hatred,” as Kitto says. She’s not one of us. She’s so different we’re fascinated.

Kitto says the dramatic conception has changed.

Sophocles took the myth about how Orestes and his sister Electra decided to kill their mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. The siblings thought it was justice for their father, Agamemnon, murdered by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.

Sophocles emphasized the moral weight of the decision. His play is a tragedy.

Euripides was not interested in moral or social lessons. He was interested in the most effective theatrical production. In Kitto’s terms, we’ve gone from tragedy to tragi-comedy and now melodrama. This is art for art’s sake. There’s no “higher” or “deeper” message.

In Iphigeneia at Tauris and Ion, Euripides held our interest with suspenseful plots. In Electra, he holds it with his characters.

Everyone who attended this play knew the plot. They were fascinated — perhaps horrified — by the characters.

In Sophocles’ telling, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are awful people who don’t deserve much pity. In Euripides, they do. Clytemnestra isn’t sure she’s done the right thing in killing her husband. Aegisthus is the kind of guy who invites strangers and foreigners to a feast.

But Electra mercilessly uses her mother’s humanity against her. Electra, who was married off to an impoverished farmer to keep her from bearing noble sons who might seek revenge, pretends to have had a child and invites her mother to come offer sacrifices for it. She lures grandmother into a trap.

Orestes has a limited role in the plot. He just needs to kill people. Euripides might have portrayed him in many ways — as a fearless avenger, perhaps. Instead, Euripides’ Orestes is indecisive and fearful: a backstabber.

The violence is graphic and gratuitous. It’s not elevating. It’s riveting.

If I had to summarize the play in a line, I’d let Electra speak it:

 

If the first death was just, the second too is just.

 

But we know that the first death is rarely just, and what follows almost never makes things better.

• Sources: H.D.F. Kitto, Greek Tragedy; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1954. The section on Electra is on pp. 348-60. The quotations are on pp. 352. Electra, translated by Emily Townsend Vermeule, is in Euripides V in The Complete Greek Tragedies, edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore; Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1953, pp. 1-66. The quotation is on p. 52.