Revenge is for the Men

Between Lysistrata last week and the feminist takes on Foucault and his theories this week, we have seen a lot of women, modern and classical.  However, I want to take a moment to talk about one of my favorite women in antiquity: Clytemnestra.  I first read Aeschylus’ play Agamemnon last year and have reread it multiple times.  From it I have the firmly held belief that Clytemnestra did nothing wrong. 

Agamemnon, the first part of the Oresteia, follows Clytemnestra as her husband Agamemnon returns home after having been off fighting in the Trojan War.  Fun fact: Helen is Clytemnestra’s half-sister (with Helen’s father being Zeus), while Agamemnon and Menelaus are brothers.  Back to the play, Agamemnon returns successfully from the war with a woman, Cassandra, as a war prize.  It might not have been the best idea for him to come back home with a concubine but that is actually the least of his sins as far as Clytemnestra is concerned.  You see, before setting sail for Troy, Agamemnon had upset one of the gods, who prevented Agamemnon’s ships from sailing.  In order for him to actually make it to Troy, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to the gods.  Once he returns home, Clytemnestra kills him and Cassandra, and they all live happily ever after. 

Not really, of course.  This is a tragedy after all, and we can’t have a woman killing a man without some recompense.  But I’m going to ignore the other two parts of the Oresteia.  I want to, instead, focus on the characterization of Clytemnestra.  After Clytemnestra has killed Agamemnon, she argues with the Chorus, who represent the elders (men) of Argos.  The Chorus talks about how she has done a terrible crime, and how the gods will punish her, while she defends herself, citing the murder of her child as justification.  One death answered by another.  Though brutal, it is a form of justice.  Clytemnestra had been wronged by Agamemnon, and she got revenge.  However, because she is a woman, this is not a heroic moment.  Instead, it eventually leads to Agamemnon’s son, Orestes, killing her in an act of revenge. 

In a way, this reminds me of Lysistrata, where the men are too busy gawking to actually listen to what Lysistrata is saying.  She is delivering a well articulated, well thought out speech with very important points, and the men are too busy seeing her as a woman to take anything she says seriously. 

While it is telling that as a woman Clytemnestra wasn’t allowed the same sort of revenge as one would expect a man to seek out, what is more interesting is the last hundred lines of the play.  At the very end of the play, a new guy, Aegisthus, shows up.  He is the cousin of Agamemnon and, for long and convoluted reasons including a hellish family tree and wife stealing, he hates Agamemnon.  Supposedly, Aegisthus and Clytemnestra came up with the plan to kill Agamemnon as revenge for their numerous complaints.  However, Aegisthus is never referenced earlier in the play and he only shows up in the last one hundred lines.  He just comes in and claims all the credit for killing Agamemnon, even though Clytemnestra did all the work.  This ending reminds me a lot of the ending of Lysistrata where, having completely her role, Lysistrata completely disappears form the end of the play.  While Clytemnestra sticks around and actually has the last words of the play, she loses all the agency and character that had carried her through the play.  She goes from a strong woman, taking matters into her own hands, to a woman clinging onto a man a desperately asking for the violence to stop.  It is a very disorienting shift that I feel reveals a lot about the expectations of women in Ancient Athens.