Euripides Vs. Aeschylus: Comparing Two Versions of Electra

Damsel in Distress or Avenging Angel? Who Wrote the Better Electra?

THE STORY SO FAR: Agamemnon was a Greek general during the Trojan War, who sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia in order to win the gods' favor. Clytaemestra, who had been told that Iphigenia was to be married, took a lover in her grief and avenged her daughter's murder by killing her husband. Orestes, with the involvement of his sister Electra, murdered his mother to avenge his father. The gods frown on the murder of blood kin and sent the Furies after him to avenge the murder of mother by child.

Euripides' Electra is a satirical tragedy that mocks the idealized characters and implausible elements of traditional myth and Aeschylus' plays (The Orestia). This play is an answer for those bothersome details that do not make sense.

Electra is the only living daughter (if one accepts that Iphigenia was sacrificed) of Agamemnon and Clytaemestra. In traditional myth and Aeschylus' plays, she is the tragic figure made to suffer in her father's absence, the noble figure bearing the burden of Aegisthus' rule, the passive figure watching Orestes take revenge on her father's killers. In Euripides' Electra, she is not. Instead, she is the self-centered daughter achieving revenge by displaying herself in rags. She rejoices in her grief, singing and dancing when alone, so that everyone will know of Aegisthus' cruelties to her. She rejects help from others to make her situation more horrible to the casual viewer. In short, she delights in her own hardships just to spite Aegisthus whose only business with her was to make sure her sons would be worthless. Also, Electra does not passively watch Orestes; she arranges for Clytaemestra to come to her home to perform a ritual and then urges Orestes when he falters in her murder.