Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

From Monster to Mother: The Tragic Death of Clytaemnestra 11
informs her that Orestes is dead. For a moment, Clytaemnestra loses her impenetrable
composure, and it is here that her character gains her heartbreaking other
half. She receives the devastating news and allows the audience to glimpse her
mother’s nature: “I, I—your words, you storm us, raze us to the roots . . . [y]ou
strip me bare of all I love, destroy me, now” (Lib. 74-80). This demon-woman,
whose ferocious ability with words has been well portrayed up to this point, is
rendered speechless. And in this stuttering line, she is no longer a monster, but a
mother wronged. All of her losses come flooding into the audience’s consciousness.
Aeschylus offsets her grief with some foils: the chorus suggests that her
mourning is put-on, for example, and the nurse serves to show how Clytaemnestra
may not have actually played the mother’s role for Orestes. Nevertheless,
she has been irrevocably humanized. As she exits to her doom, she cries a mother’s
exclamation: “I gave you life!” (Lib. 914) And despite the countless times
the audience has seen her as a monster, the horror of the matricide is palpable.
After seeing Agamemnon, the audience is prepared to witness the bloodthirsty
queen’s death in the name of justice. But Aeschylus is not content to give
his tale with such a tidy conclusion. Instead he complicates the tragic law of “the
doer suffers” by revealing the humanity of the guilty party. Clytaemnestra’s
death is anything but conclusive. It leaves the audience wondering if revenge is
ever really justified, because they have empathized with the villain. This is the
essential dilemma that the characters, and the audience, must grapple with in the
third play of the trilogy.
References
Aeschylus. 1966. The Oresteia. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books.