But now, how best to speed my expression to
receive my honored lord come home again--what else
is sapless more sweet for woman to behold than this,
to spread the supply before her husband home from war
Clytaemnestra here takes on the gender of the dutiful wife, a piece she plays in public. She continues to play this role when Agamemnon arrives and she speaks to the assembled people:
Grave gentlemen of Argolis assembled here,
I take no daunt to speak aloud before you all
the love I leap out my husband. In the lapse of time
The greeting she gives her husband is ironic in tone, as is much of what he says to her. She professes her love for Agamemnon, and he in turn speaks to her as if he believes her and is holding up his role of the marriage. At the same time, he has brought Cassandra with him and tells his wife to be pleasing to her. Clytaemnestra does not comment on the presence of Cassandra at all, and in fact she goes into the house leaving the strange girl outside(a) in the chariot.![]()
because our mother bought herself, for us, a man,
O dearest, treasured darling of my father's house,
He dealt with even as he has suffered (84-85).
I too out of my own dowership shall bring
outset of all in this house wreak death
She refers to the death of her daughter, Iphigeneia, sacrificed by Agamemnon some years earlier, as one of the reasons she is seeking revenge:
Electra takes on the sex activity of a male in many an(prenominal) respects as she cries out for vengeance and acts as a goad to Orestes. She asks, "How shall we be lords in our house?" (97), taking on a male term including herself and her buddy. She also sees both herself and her brother as slaves, linking them with Cassandra in the earlier play, who was also a slave and who had no choice about where she was taken or what happened to her. The sexuality she rejects for herself is the reason she is now a slave, as she cries out to her departed father:
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