The truth hidden in this monologue is her comparison of herself to a watchdog. Moreover, she is the very one who wishes him ill. In Agamemnon’s absence, Clytemnestra speaks of a hypothetical woman’s joy, not her own, and refers to herself in the third person to distance herself from feminine roles.

The Agamemnon paints an a-gendered portrait of Clytemnestra using mixed-gender language, liminal positioning, and Clytemnestra’s murderous act.Īeschylus introduced Clytemnestra to his audience with a lie pouring from her mouth: “For what joy is sweeter in a woman's eyes than to unbar the gates for her husband when God has spared him to return from war? Give this message to my husband: let him come with all speed, his country's fond desire, come to find at home his wife faithful, even as he left her, a watchdog of his house, loyal to him, a foe to those who wish him ill… Of pleasure from any other man or of scandalous repute I know no more than of dyeing bronze.” Clytemnestra’s characterisation hinges on this lie. Hesitation to call Clytemnestra a variation on a stock-character woman leads to a fulfilling perspective: Clytemnestra as genderless. Classicist Barbara Goward considered the peculiarity of Clytemnestra’s gender without satisfactorily confirming Clytemnestra’s characterisation as adhering to the gender binary. The unfaithful wife of Mycenaean King Agamemnon during the Trojan war is one of Greek tragedy’s most tantalising figures. The construction of gender in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon can be seen through Clytemnestra. Inspired by Michael Foucault and John Boswell, Classical scholars have lately turned their gazes towards gender and sexuality. 455 BC), the father of tragedy, that foundational aspects of gender performance in Greek drama can be first identified. Gender categories as written and as performed necessarily differ according to the male-dominated world of Greek theatre.

Agamemnon by Aeschylus