ELEKTRA - Stratford Festival

in my grief.
I bear it hard.
But I tell you I have no choice.
She has no choice, because she has no other self
than the one that mourns. She is clear about this:
I cannot not grieve.
Locked between the two negatives of this
despairing sentence is the whole range of her
options as Elektra. Again her clarity:
I need one food:
I must not violate Elektra.
What does it mean to “not violate Elektra”? Her
sense of self is amazing. Pressure comes from
every side, from everyone around her, to acquiesce
in the crimes of her mother and keep outrage quiet.
Pressure has partly succeeded: she is deformed.
Psychologically and morally she has no room to
breathe or move. And she knows this. She says to
the chorus:
Evil is a pressure that shapes us to itself.
Later, more bitterly, to her mother:
I am the shape you made me.
Filth teaches filth.
To “violate Elektra” would be to stop saying no to
evil and filth. Sophokles is a playwright fascinated
in general by people who say no, people who
resist compromise, people who make stumbling
blocks of themselves, like Antigone or Ajax. These
characters usually express defiance in some heroic
action – Antigone buries her brother, Ajax falls
on his sword. Elektra has the same kind of raw,
stubborn, scandalous soul, but her circumstances
are different: Elektra is deprived of action.
The play begins with two men centre stage
making a plan that will change her life and deciding
not to tell her about it, although she is hovering just
inside the door (they hear her weeping). The play
ends with two men centre stage marching into the
house to complete the revenge plot while Elektra
is left outside to follow after them or stand and wait,
no one seems to care. The play’s centrepiece is
a deception scene in which two men manipulate
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