This might be incoherent but I wanna talk about tumblr’s girlbossification of Clytemnestra because like. A) “Clytemnestra was right” ignores/erases a lot of really fascinating complexity from the story and frankly does a massive disservice to both Electra and Iphigenia, the daughter Agamemnon killed, two of my favorite girlbosses in the canon (and Orestes, who I also adore), and B) Clytemnestra is way more interesting when we open up the moral ambiguity of what she did as opposed to oversimplifying it to “grieving mother kills her husband for killing her daughter,” which is arguably not even a simple version of what happened.
First off, “was Agamemnon right to kill Iphigenia,” “was Clytemnestra right to kill Agamemnon,” and “was Orestes right to kill Clytemnestra” are three separate questions, and the latter two take the answer to the previous ones into account but aren’t solely determined by them, but tumblr seems to get stuck on “no, obviously,” therefore “yes, obviously,” therefore “no, obviously,” which is an interpretation, but all three are really interesting complex questions, that’s why people keep fucking writing Oresteias!!
“Was Agamemnon right to kill Iphigenia” is often looked at as “is it cool to kill a teenage girl so you can go to war” but it is WAY more complicated than that. Like I am fully on the fuck Agamemnon train but not for the reasons I feel like a lot of people here are. Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis is so fucking good and really highlights how utterly and completely Agamemnon did not have a choice. It wasn’t “sacrifice Iphigenia or go home,” it was “sacrifice Iphigenia or all the armies die here at Aulis,” which means that functionally it was “sacrifice Iphigenia or the men kill you and then her anyway.” On top of that, it’s not like turning around and going home would be a real option even if it was a logistical one, and this is Not the post to get into the causes of the Trojan War but the short version for this purpose is that is simply not how a tragedy works. Still extremely fuck Agamemnon for lying to Iphigenia and to Clytemnestra and for using Achilles, and Achilles in that play does a great job demonstrating how we’d want Agamemnon to act by telling Iphigenia fuck that I will take on every single soldier here if you say the word but like. That isn’t a rational response, that’s a prideful, emotional response and the narrative knows it and Iphigenia knows it. Iphigenia was tricked to Aulis and for that Agamemnon is a shithead, but Iphigenia went willingly to the altar and she died a hero and she knew it, and that is way too sexy and powerful to bury to make an uncomplicated vengeful mother story out of Clytemnestra. Of course that’s only one telling and there are others where Iphigenia doesn’t have that kind of power but why would you ignore the ones where she’s so fucking cool. My best friend Iphigenia
“Was Clytemnestra right to kill Agamemnon” I gotta say I am still on board with “lmao yeah” to that one but there is so much more to it than revenge. I think it’s important to acknowledge that Clytemnestra very much was cheating with Agamemnon with his cousin and she very much did kill him for power and while it is a sexist double standard to condemn her for infidelity and not Agamemnon I think we can in fact condemn them both! And there’s also that there is so much indignity in the way she killed him that I feel like gets lost in cultural translation but like. Agamemnon did not get to die gloriously in battle. Agamemnon died naked and tangled in a shower curtain after returning home victorious. It’s the same kind of thing that makes Medea’s prophecy of Jason’s death so powerful, that a great hero dies pathetically, and you absolutely could argue he fucking deserves it (Jason certainly did) but it is also worth acknowledging that Agamemnon does not get the dignified death that Iphigenia does. Even if we take Clytemnestra killing Agamemnon as purely revenge, she gave him worse than he gave Iphigenia. And we gotta acknowledge that she did also axe murder Cassandra which is just plain fucked up. I don’t think I have to explain that one that’s fucked up. But my point is Clytemnestra is frankly SO much more interesting if we separate “did Agamemnon deserve what he got” (yeah, probably) from “did Clytemnestra do it for the right reasons” (who knows!)
And “was Orestes right to kill Clytemnestra” I mean. That one’s so complicated it gets an entire play of the Oresteia dedicated to it. That one’s so complicated Aeschylus had the Athenian justice system invented to deal with it. And this post about Clytemnestra is not NEARLY gonna get into All My Thoughts About That (affirmations voice I am NOT going to go off about Hamlet-Orestes parallels in this post) but the main factor in how it relates to Thoughts On Clytemnestra Specifically is like. Pretty consistently Clytemnestra was a shitty mother at least to Electra and (looks at smudged writing on hand) chrysanthemums [Chrysothemis] and depending on the telling just straight-up Sold Orestes. In at least three of four tellings I’m familiar with (I do not remember if it comes up in the Odyssey and I cannot be assed to check rn) Electra is 100% on board with the mother-murdering, and in Euripides she actually holds the sword with Orestes and helps him physically do it which is fucking metal I adore Electra with my entire heart. Like. Yes the final argument Aeschylus gives to acquit Orestes (that the father is more closely related to the child than the mother) is utter bullshit but he also doesn’t (directly) address a lot of the factors that are Very Relevant to us today (like, any of the non-avenging-his-father reasons for Orestes to kill Clytemnestra, nor any of the non-because-she’s-his-mother reasons for him not to), so I think analysis can and should go well beyond what Aeschylus brings up
Anyway I. I swear this isn’t an anti-Clytemnestra post this is just a pro-acknowledging Clytemnestra’s complexity post because frankly she (and Iphigenia, and Electra) is WAY too cool a character to be oversimplified how I keep seeing. I mean I don’t know what I expected to happen to one of the most juicily morally gray stories I’ve ever encountered on a site where black-and-white hot takes are encouraged but also I hope people who are big enough nerds to read my five-paragraph essay about Clytemnestra are on board for deeper analysis dhfgdhg
