Electra

The play’s motif of the quotidian and domestic items—food, clothing, chores—is somewhat surprising in a Greek tragedy. Usually, Greek tragedies cultivate a very elevated and heroic tone, taking place in a remote mythical past and putting on stage larger-than-life figures such as heroes and gods. In the brutal, anti-heroic world of Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon dresses in rags and manages the house of a simple Farmer. The simplicity of the home becomes a symbol for the degraded values of the characters.

Electra speaks of her role in keeping the house “tidy” (76), tells Orestes of how she must “weave my clothes myself and slavelike at the loom” (307) or of how she goes to “fetch and carry water from the riverside” (309). She bickers with her husband over how “bare” (404) their house is. The play is punctuated with bits of domestic folk wisdom, often coming from the Farmer, sometimes reminiscent of the rustic didactic poetry (such as Hesiod’s Works and Days) that was popular in ancient Greece—for example, the Farmer’s statement that “A lazy man may rustle gods upon his tongue / but never makes a living if he will not work” (80-81), or: