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Sophocles' Electra As Agent of Metatheatricality

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Sophocles' Electra As Agent of Metatheatricality Discentes Volume 4 Issue 2 Volume 4, Issue 2 Article 9 2016 Sophocles' Electra as Agent of Metatheatricality Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/discentesjournal Part of the Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque Art and Architecture Commons, Classics Commons, and the History Commons Recommended Citation . 2016. "Sophocles' Electra as Agent of Metatheatricality." Discentes 4, (2):43-59. https://repository.upenn.edu/discentesjournal/vol4/iss2/9 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/discentesjournal/vol4/iss2/9 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sophocles' Electra as Agent of Metatheatricality This article is available in Discentes: https://repository.upenn.edu/discentesjournal/vol4/iss2/9 Sophocles' Electra as Agent of Metatheatricality Erynn Kim, Princeton University The attempt to extract a definite interpre- 1. John Sheppard (1918, tation of Sophocles’ Electra has polarized the scholarship 1927) and J.H. Kells (1973) 1 give ironic readings that into two distinct camps. The pessimists maintain that the ultimately fall in the play is “sombre and unrelieved beyond any other play of pessimistic camp. Sir 2 Richard Jebb (1894) uses Sophocles,” while the optimists describe it as “not even (in a a Homerizing approach 3 that concludes optimisti- deep way) a tragedy,” but rather “a combination of matricide 4 cally, and Waldock (1966) and good spirits.” This dichotomy has led to an attempt at has a strictly optimistic reading. There are many reconciliation that is equally dissatisfying. Grappling with other examples for each this slippery issue, one scholar seems to throw up his hands, camp (see MacLeod p. 5, n. 11 and p. 11, n. 24), but the stating, “I have no solution to these dilemmas and rather think aforementioned readings 5 are, if not the most that Sophocles had none.” The tone of the text is indeed groundbreaking, at least troubling. Exploring a complicated case of justice achieved effectively representative of their respective camps. by corrupt means, the play seems to leave the audience with 2. H.D.F. Kitto, Greek more questions than answers. Surely the end cannot justify Tragedy (1955) as cited in Charles Paul means so extreme as matricide and murder? Perhaps it can, Segal, “The Electra of Sophocles,” Transactions for the protagonists of Sophocles’ Electra apparently get away and Proceedings of the with murder by the end of the play. In any case, the main issue American Philological Association 97, (1966): 474, at hand is the nature of justice, and it is clear that the question accessed November 25, of whether Electra promotes justice or injustice has no easy 2015, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/2936027. answer. discentes 43 This obstacle, however, has not prevented scholars from seeking different angles that might usefully shed light on the play. Such scholars 6 as Leona MacLeod recognize that defending the middle ground is necessary to read this complicated play, since the audience may support Orestes and Electra and “recognize the justice of their cause” but simul- taneously feel “urged to be repelled by their arguments and the brutality 7 of their attitudes and actions.” MacLeod focuses on “the under- standing of the role of the dolos and the aischron in the pursuit of a just vengeance” to show that there is justice in Electra, but the means used to achieve it gives the play an 8 undeniably dark tone. While this Red-figure bell-krater of Elektra and Orestes, ca. 340-330 BCE. perspective seems to best reconcile 3. A.J.A. Waldock, Sophocles and also acknowledge the complexities of this tragedy, it does the Dramatist (1951) as not explain the potential motivation behind portraying such cited in Charles Paul Segal, “The Electra of Sophocles,” dubious justice, or what Mark Ringer calls “the play’s extraor- 9 Transactions and Proceedings dinary tonal ambivalence.” Ringer claims that “this ambiv- of the American Philological 10 Association 97, (1966): 474, alence is rooted in the tragedy’s metatheatrical nature,” for accessed November 25, 2015, http://www.jstor.org/ theater itself is the art of duality—actors play characters, and stable/2936027. nothing is actually real. His sweeping analysis of the play’s 4. Gilbert Murray, The Electra metatheatrical elements, while constructive, can perhaps be of Euripides (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1905), vi. developed in a particular direction in order to explain the 5. Charles Paul Segal, “The Electra of Sophocles,” purpose of the tonal ambivalence rather than merely uncover Transactions and Proceedings its roots. While a single close reading cannot be presumed to of the American Philological Association 97, (1966): 540, resolve the scholarly dispute over optimistic versus pessimistic accessed November 25, 2015, http://www.jstor.org/ readings of the play, it may yield fruitful implications for this stable/2936027. debate. By studying the tension between traditional gender 6. It is necessary to acknowledge that the main roles in speech and deed (λόγος and ἔργον) and space within issue at hand is the complex and without (ἔνδον and ἐκτός) during the climactic murders 44 discentes discentes 45 in Sophocles’ , one can see how Electra’s manipulation concept of justice. The Electra reason scholars do not of these tensions through her speech gives her metathe- know what to make of the play is because Electra's atrical control over the action within the text, the physical justice is achieved by and metaphysical space of the play, and ultimately the entire unjust means and thus not a black and white drama, leaving justice fulfilled but only under Electra’s own case. Some scholars, such terms. as Whitman (1951) try to evade this issue, arguing that the play's focus is the Electra first asserts her control over ἔργον through character of Electra rather than justice (Whitman, λόγος by stretching the traditional female and male roles 155). However, avoiding assigned to λόγος and ἔργον. The tension caused by this the issue only sweeps the problem under the manipulation is particularly apparent in the scenes involving rug, for justice plays too the murders of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, specifically large a role in Electra to be ignored, especially when Electra addresses the chorus at the beginning of the given how undeniably complicated and thus strophe: problematic this role is. Other scholars do little Hλ. ὦ φίλταται γυναῖκες, ἅνδρες αὐτίκα more than restate formerly proposed arguments. τελοῦσι τοὔργον• ἀλλὰ σῖγα πρόσμενε. MacLeod seems to best 11 Xo. πῶς δή; τί νῦν πράσσουσιν; illustrate a productive middle ground since she El. O dearest women, the men at once accepts justice as the will finish the deed; but wait in silence. play's main issue and faces 12 it head on (MacLeod, 19). Ch. How indeed? What are they doing now? 7. Leona MacLeod, Dolos & Dike in Sophokles’ Elektra (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 17. The antithesis in line 1398 between the vocative 8. MacLeod, 186. γυναῖκες and the nominative ἅνδρες, the subject that 9. Mark Ringer, Electra and 13 the Empty Urn (Chapel will complete τοὔργον (l.1399), nicely illustrates what Hill: The University of Thomas Woodard calls “the masculine world of erga” and North Carolina Press, 14 1998), 128. “the feminine world of logoi.” Women are traditionally 10. Ringer, 128. 11. Sophocles, Electra, confined to speech; only men can act. Here Electra urges the 15 trans.P.J. Finglass female chorus not only to wait rather than act (πρόσμενε) (Cambridge: Cambridge 16 University Press, 2007), 82. but also to suppress what power of speech they have (σῖγα). 12. All translations in this The roles of women and men seem to be clearly delineated. paper are author's own. 13. Soph. El. 1.1398-1399. Woodard argues that “Orestes and Electra serve as emblems 14. Thomas M. Woodard, 17 “Electra by Sophocles: for the worlds of ergon and logos respectively,” and up The Dialectical Design,” to this point it does indeed seem that the men and women Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 68, are following their traditional roles. At line 1400, however, (1964): 177, accessed a shift occurs when the chorus asks Electra what the men November 25, 2015, 18 http://www.jstor.org/ are doing now (πράσσουσιν). One would expect Electra stable/310804. 15. Soph. El. 1.1399. to answer the chorus with a simple description relaying the discentes 45 16. Soph. El. l.1399. action encapsulated in the word πράσσουσιν, but instead she 17.Woodard, 174. interacts with the masculine sphere of ἔργον. The tone of this 18.Soph. El. l.1400. 19. Soph. El. 1.1404-1416 scene is undeniably dark as Clytemnestra cries out an unprec- 20. Soph El. 1.1406-1410 edented total of five times (αἰαῖ; οἴμοι; ὦ τέκνον; τέκνον; 21.Soph. El. I.1415-416 .19 22. Sarah Nooter, When ὤμοι; ὤμοι) The pathos generated by Clytemnestra’s cries Heroes Sing: Sophocles and starkly contrasts with Electra’s indifferent tone. Although the Shifting Soundscape Electra knows that Clytemnestra is the source of the cries, she of Tragedy (Cambridge: 20 Cambridge University refers to her twice with the indefinite pronoun τις, effec- Press, 2012), 101. tively stripping away Clytemnestra’s identity. Thus, Electra 23. Nooter, 121. 24. Kitzinger, while a does not simply describe the goings on inside the house but proponent of a metathe- also expands the function λόγος can have. The spheres of atrical reading of Electra, λόγος and ἔργον collide and intermingle as Electra’s words focuses on metatheatri- cality as an interpretation suddenly have power beyond that of description. that is separate from and apparently more important The most striking physical show of the power of than the question of justice (Kitzinger, 299). Electra’s λόγος comes with Clytemnestra’s actual murder; 25. Rachel Kitzinger, “Why Mourning Becomes Hλ.
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