Electra and Other Plays (1998)

Euripides seems to have had a thing for writing about strong, violent women. While it could not displace Medea for me, Electra also featured strong women characters that produced feelings of ambivalence in me. Electra, the title character, is the daughter of Clytemenestra and Agamemnon. The brutal history of her parents is told in other plays. While Electra is put in a bad situation by Clytemnestra's actions, I couldn't help but feel that she was pretty whiny about things- she seems to enjoy her misery in a weird way. In contrast, Clytemnestra was considerably more sympathetic than I was expecting her to be. She seemed grief stricken about what she had done but resolved to make the best of a bad situation. Which makes it rather jarring when Electra demands that her brother kill their mother even after he has second thoughts about matricide.

In addition to gripping female characters, Electra offers yet another meditation on the theme of appearance versus reality. The poor farmer who Electra has been forced to marry is probably the most honorable, good character in the drama and he disappears shortly into it. While he is of a low stature within society, he is about the only character who doesn't do anything morally questionable within the play. So don't judge a book by its cover, basically. Additionally, I was struck by how much the play seemed to question the judgment of the gods, specifically Apollo in this case. The only reason Orestes, the brother, goes through with killing his mother is because Apollo told him to (and Electra urged him to). And the play ends with a couple of the other minor gods telling Electra and Orestes that this was an error on the part of Apollo. What does it mean for humans when the gods make mistakes or don't agree? ( )