Virtue and honour : the gender division ; Aeschylus' Oresteia
Abstract
Clytemnestra is first associated with Agamemnon's murder in Homer's
‘Odyssey’, though her participation in the deed is ambiguous, until Agamemnon
reveals that she was an active agent. He compares his faithless wife to
Odysseus' Penelope, who represents the 'perfect' wife in her behaviour. A brief
examination of Penelope and of her fidelity to her absent husband reveals a series
of duties that comprise wifely virtues in a woman.
It has long been recognized that Aeschylus' ‘Oresteia’ is written through
and against paradigms derived from the ‘Odyssey’. I argue that Clytemnestra can
only be properly understood with reference to the virtues attributed to Penelope.
An important but often neglected motivation for her revenge against
Agamemnon lies in his failure to acknowledge his wife's virtue, by killing
Iphigeneia and bringing Cassandra into the oikos as a concubine.
Aeschylus uses society's expectations of the virtues of a wife and creates
the terrifying character of a woman who throws away virtue to possess honour. I
examine the ‘Agamemnon’ to highlight Clytemnestra's attempts to redefine herself
as worthy of masculine honour, through her `manly' behaviour, both in word and
action, in reaction to Agamemnon's disregard for Clytemnestra's wifely virtue.
The consequences of Clytemnestra's rejection of virtue is at the heart of the
‘Choephoroi’; her children suffer from her disavowal of the duties of wife and
mother. Orestes returns to avenge his father; to punish the mother who was no
mother to him, and her lover; to set his disordered oikos to rights. The ‘Eumenides’ completes the marginalization of Clytemnestra, as she is replaced by
the Erinyes and Athena, and her desire for honour and vengeance is replaced by
the larger issue of the place of vengeance in society, and returning the oikos to its
original order.
Type
Thesis, MPhil Master of Philosophy
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