ELECTRA LOST IN TRANSIT

Abstract

Like all the tragedies about the House of Atreus, Euripides’ Electra dramatizes the political stakes of familial disorder. In the background lies the legendary story of Agamemnon who sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia and, after returning from Troy, was killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Electra takes place sometime after that murder and political usurpation, with the couple scrambling to secure their rule against the potential threat of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra's children. When the play opens, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus have already exiled Orestes from Argos and relocated Electra to its border where she lives in a forced countryside marriage to a poor farmer. Over the course of the play, the siblings reunite and plot the murders of their mother and her new husband. By its end, Orestes and Electra are prepared to say goodbye to each other for good and, under the stain of matricide, to embark on their respective forms of movement, wandering for him and a new marriage for her.