Today I gave a presentation in my classical drama class — about ten minutes. It seemed to go really well — well received, applause. And it was fun to write, even though I was stressing about it because I kind of wrote it at the last minute, even though it had been germinating in my head for about two weeks. The text is below.
Critical Response to The Oresteia
“A War for Women; or, All Women Are Meant to be Invaded; or, Troy Is a Vagina and Our Horse Is a Dick; or, Alternatives to Power Beyond Penetration and Violation“
From our debates and discussions in class, it is obvious that gender plays a very important role in Aeschylus’s The Oresteia. Some of us in class have expressed empathy toward Clytemnestra for the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigeneia and believe that, perhaps, her murder of Agamemnon had some justification. Others contend that she has ulterior motives than avenging her daughter’s death and that her murder of Agamemnon is malicious and calculated. In this presentation, I would like to briefly offer a reading of The Oresteia that argues that in fact, the reasons for Clytemnestra’s actions are not as important as the way in which she acts and the way power is involved in her actions.
My reading is dependent, really, on a few questions: How do women attempt to gain power in the play Oresteia? How do men work to maintain power in the play? What can the ways men and women struggle with power tell us about gender relations?
It is important that we know right away — in the opening monologue — that Clytemnestra is not mourning as a woman is supposed to, according to the Watchman, but is instead acting like a man (Aeschylus 3). The Chorus is in agreement with the Watchman: Clytemnestra “talks[s] like a man talks“ (13). It seems that to the Greeks, a woman can either be weak and weeping, or if she attempts to take power through strong language and aggression, she is acting like a man. Clytemnestra, wronged by the sacrifice of her daughter, can no longer act like a woman is supposed to act, but instead acts like a man. She engages in trickery to make Agamemnon offend the gods by walking on a red/purple carpet, and she murders not only him but also Casandra, who is innocent in regards to the crimes of the family.
Indeed, this is, in a way, a reenactment of the destruction of Troy. The Greek soldiers (men, of course) went to Troy for the purpose of revenge and to take what was rightfully theirs. In order to defeat Troy, they engage in trickery by giving a false gift, and then penetrate Troy through this trickery. The Greeks then destroy the city and kill many innocent people in order to get justice. So, in both cases, Clytemnestra’s murder of her husband and the Greek’s defeat of Troy, there is 1) a trick used in order to make a transgressive entry into a home or city (Agamemnon on purple carpet into the palace; the Greeks hidden in the gift of a horse into Troy), and 2) the murder and destruction of innocent people, all predicated on the need for justice.
Of course, the play gives us no clue as to whether there were ulterior motives for invading Troy other than the retrieval of Helen and making a supposed wrong a right. However, one might infer from the play the Clytemnestra’s motives are not solely about revenge for her lost daughter, especially when, throughout the majority of the second and third parts of the play, Iphigeneia’s murder is not really mentioned as a motivator. I would argue that it doesn’t much matter why Clytemnestra is attempting to get power; what matters is the manner in which she does so. She does so in the same way men get power, which I would, for the sake of brevity and timeliness, break down into five parts:
- Penetration. The Greeks penetrated Troy. Clytemnestra, through the manipulation of her husband, causes him to penetrate her home with violated feet (the feet which walked on the purple carpet). Since Clytemnestra, as a woman in a heterosexual relationship, is not normally the penetrater, she must penetrate by proxy and trickery.
- Violation. The Greeks were able to violate certain mores surrounding honesty, hospitality, and trust. Clytemnestra chose to violate taboos coded into the red/purple color of the carpet.
- Deceit.
- Destruction and murder. Obvious.
- Predicated on the idea of revenge and a false sense of justice. Is it truly just to become powerful and kill those who have wronged you? I would contend not.
I have used the terms penetration and violation purposefully here. It is here that I would like to bring in theorist Andrea Dworkin, who argues that the way we talk about and view heterosexual sex informs the way we relate to each other and the way power structures exist. Some of you may recognize her name because she is often linked to the phrase, “all heterosexual sex is rape.“ However, that is a misrepresentation of her ideas. In her book Intercourse, she writes:A human being has a body that is inviolate; and when it is violated, it is abused. A woman has a body that is penetrated in intercourse: permeable, its corporeal solidness a lie. The discourse of male truth — literature, science, philosophy, pornography — calls that penetration violation. This it does with some consistency and some confidence. Violation is a synonym for intercourse. At the same time, the penetration is taken to be a use, not an abuse; a normal use; it is appropriate to enter her, to push into (“violate“) the boundaries of her body. She is human, of course, but by a standard that does not include physical privacy. She is, in fact, human by a standard that precludes physical privacy, since to keep a man out altogether and for a lifetime is deviant in the extreme, a psychopathology, a repudiation of the way in which she is expected to manifest her humanity. (122)
In short, the way men talk in literature, truth, law, etc. draws on the metaphor of heterosexual sex, but the way we talk about sex: violation and penetration, continues a system of domination of men over women. I would contend that when Clytemnestra attempts to get power, she must act like a man because power is talked about in no other way; she knows no other method of power than penetration, violation, destruction, and a type of revenge called justice.
The Oresteia is a play that chronicles the Athenian move from blood justice to justice of the court. In fact, this is an era most obsessed with justice in Athens: Questions were being asked about what defined justice. In Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, the characters Socrates and Callacles contend with each other over the nature of justice. Callicles, a defender of the imperial Athenian leader Pericles, defines justice as the stronger ruling over the weaker: He states, “being better and wiser he should have both rule and advantage over the baser people“ (Plato 114). Additionally, “men of wisdom and manliness in public affairs…are the persons who ought to rule our cities“ (115). Callicles goes on to describe justice: “these [men of wisdom and manliness] should have more than other people,“ and “he who would live rightly should let his desires be as strong as possible and not chasten them, and should be able to minister to them when they are at their height by reason of his manliness and intelligence, and satisfy each appetite in turn with what it desire“ (115). Callicles’s definition of justice is self-centered and self-interested. Virtue, according to Callicles, is “luxury and licentiousness and liberty, if they have the support of force“ (116). Socrates, a critic of imperialism, notes that Callicles’ view of justice is actually the dominant view of justice at the time (116). Socrates contends that the rhetoric and actions of those like Pericles and Callicles offers a reality that actually harms Athens: Justice based on courage, strength, and manliness does not take into account the interests of people in other cities, and actually made Athens weaker “with no regard for temperance and justice they have stuffed the city with harbors and arsenal and walls and tribute and suchlike trash“ (133).
While Socrates, Pericles, Plato, and Aeschylus lived during a time of Athenian judicial systems, it is obvious that this old form of justice, of the stronger over the weaker, is still in play. One would think that a judicial system would be set up to eliminate this form of so-called justice, of the domination of the strong. But if the Athenian courts were dominated by the form of justice that Socrates criticizes, and the actions of the leaders based on a self-interested conquest, then what is the role of the courts? Why was the judicial system created at all?
Aeschylus’s play seems to be an attempt at an answer to that question. He seems to be arguing that the Athenian judicial system was needed in order to stop a possibly endless chain of revenge over blood-debt. The decision to begin a judicial system was a negotiation between Apollo and the Furies. However, we have to consider how this negotiation was made, and what the motives were behind it.
It is apparent throughout this play that some women have power: Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon, the Furies have power to control blood-debt, Athena runs the court. But when we come to the trial at the end of the play, Apollo makes attempts in his rhetoric to deny any womanly power. For instance, he contends that women are merely vessels for children, and that a child is actually beholden to his or her father, who could, as Athena’s birth proves, give birth without a womb (105). Additionally, Athena abdicates her power and allegiance towards women by stating outright that she puts men first (106). By the end of the trial, Athena and Apollo have convinced the Furies to give up blood-debt, become the Eumenides, the “kind ones,“ and to take up a plot of land. The Furies have, in effect, been pacified and their threat ceased.
But what is the threat of the Furies? That they demand revenge for murdered relatives, obviously. But I think there is something else going on. If we look to the conversation between Apollo and the Furies at Delphos, we get a glimpse at Apollo’s concerns. He asks of them:
So you’d scorn bondright, the man/woman bedbond?
Hera, high she-god and Zeus the high he-god,
Hey even swore vows and were coupled in bondright.
So you’d dishonor and cast on the midden
the she-god of love, Aphrodite of Cyprus,
she with whose help men form bonds of the closest? (90)Apollo is appalled by the Furies’ neglect of protecting the sanctimonious marriage because they refuse to see murder of the husband as akin to murder of a child or parent. However, their supposed neglect of marriage goes further. Their existence as a collective of women who refuse to have sex with men is an affront to marriage as well. It is no surprise that the Furies are attached with wilderness, with the turbulent, with the unpredictable. The Furies must be Othered throughout the play because they act as an affront to the heteronormative male-centered society that describes power in the same way it describes heterosexual sex.
We must ask what other systems of power exist that do not depend on violation, penetration, deceit, and destruction. I would not argue that the Furies offer this alternative, for they still call for murder, but I think that they offer a place to start, a place to consider what alternative forms of power might look like.
