#the oresteia

Oh Electra they'll never make me hate you. Not that i truly hate any character from the house or Atreus. What many people do often is jumping into defence mode for Clytemnestra whereas her actions speak of a layered personality that her actions influenced negatively her children.

Yes she lost a daughter, but Electra and Orestes also lost a sister. Grief became pain, anger twisting the knife of tragedy to this family. Clytemnestra became a mother isolated from her children, closed to her own revenge that caused her own kids to despise her, especially Electra, forced to marry a servant, becoming one by her own mother's hands. The kind of betrayal coming from your parents is a pain deep residing in the soul.

Iphigenia was the gentle and selfless martyr who their father murdered, and Electra is betraying her by having such longing for him. Her mother spits venom whenever his name is mentioned. He is banned in their conversations. She lost both of them when the winds blew, and they’re still haunting her house.

She can never live up to the daughter that Clytemnestra lost, so why should she try? Her mother resents her no matter what, clinging to the faded memories of her oldest daughter like a lifeline even if it means casting out her remaining VERY ALIVE son and daughters.

And if Iphigenia was the kind and loving and innocent child, Electra must be the angry one. She must rebel enough for the both of them because otherwise she has no identity other than Iphigenia’s sister. Electra needs to be someone other than a woman carved by tragedy. She needs to control her place in the narrative, even if that place is hateful and rage filled.

And Electra doesn’t hate Iphigenia, because that’s her older sister who played with her and taught her how to dance and would steal food from the kitchens if she was hungry, but she absolutely loathes the idea of her and what her name has become.

And poor Iphigenia returns from two decades away from her home to find her parents dead and her baby sister destroyed. And Electra cannot differentiate between the Iphigenia she knew and the Iphigenia who her mother weaponised.

TOM GLYNN-CARNEY