Year: 2004
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Clytemnestra is first associated with Agamemnon's murder in Homer's \n‘Odyssey’, though her participation in the deed is ambiguous, until Agamemnon \nreveals that she was an active agent. He compares his faithless wife to \nOdysseus' Penelope, who represents the 'perfect' wife in her behaviour. A brief \nexamination of Penelope and of her fidelity to her absent husband reveals a series \nof duties that comprise wifely virtues in a woman. \nIt has long been recognized that Aeschylus' ‘Oresteia’ is written through \nand against paradigms derived from the ‘Odyssey’. I argue that Clytemnestra can \nonly be properly understood with reference to the virtues attributed to Penelope. \nAn important but often neglected motivation for her revenge against \nAgamemnon lies in his failure to acknowledge his wife's virtue, by killing \nIphigeneia and bringing Cassandra into the oikos as a concubine. \nAeschylus uses society's expectations of the virtues of a wife and creates \nthe terrifying character of a woman who throws away virtue to possess honour. I \nexamine the ‘Agamemnon’ to highlight Clytemnestra's attempts to redefine herself \nas worthy of masculine honour, through her `manly' behaviour, both in word and \naction, in reaction to Agamemnon's disregard for Clytemnestra's wifely virtue. \nThe consequences of Clytemnestra's rejection of virtue is at the heart of the \n‘Choephoroi’; her children suffer from her disavowal of the duties of wife and \nmother. Orestes returns to avenge his father; to punish the mother who was no \nmother to him, and her lover; to set his disordered oikos to rights. The ‘Eumenides’ completes the marginalization of Clytemnestra, as she is replaced by \nthe Erinyes and Athena, and her desire for honour and vengeance is replaced by \nthe larger issue of the place of vengeance in society, and returning the oikos to its \noriginal order.
Author: Lynn M. A. Bauman
Language: English
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2542301918