Giulia Maria Chesi - The Play of Words: Blood Ties and Power Relations in Aeschylus Oresteia

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R. Barthes, S/Z

Aeschylus is the terror of systematizers

C. J. Harington, Aeschylus

The Oresteia is the tragic story of Orestes, who murders his own mother in revenge for his fathers assassination, and is ultimately acquitted by the court of Athens. In order to understand the dynamics of violence and power involved in the story of Orestes, we need to look at the complex characterisation of Clytemnestra as mother, wife and queen in the trilogy. Critics, starting from Simone de Beauvoir (1949), continuing with Zeitlin in her influential article on misogyny in the Oresteia (1978, repr. 1984 and 1996), Goldhill (1984) and more recently McClure (1997, 1999), Wohl (1998) and Foley (2001), have focused their attention on the negative characterisation of Clytemnestra as a bad mother, an adulterous wife and a female usurper of male power, whose mind is darkened. However, the Aeschylean discourse on motherhood, wifehood and power is much more articulate. Undeniably, the narrative of the play is constantly concerned with the projection of a negative image on Clytemnestra, and thereby we are faced with a successful separation of her role as mother, wife and queen: she is not a mother giving and nurturing life, but an adulterous wife, a tyrant and a foolish female. Such a gesture of separation also implies exerting control over Clytemnestra. The repudiation of her maternal role works as the crucial step in the trilogy towards:

• the definition of bloodlines as paternal (the father is the only genetic parent);
• the definition of motherhood as socially contingent (mother = the wife of the childrens father);
• the authorisation of Agamemnons power in the family and in society ( genitor, husband, head of the family, king, warrior), in order to justify matricide.

This discourse of separation and control over Clytemnestras role as mother, wife and queen allows us to agree with Seidensticker (1995:156) that the power and authority of men, in polis and oikos, remain essentially unquestioned in drama. Yet, this statement might be applied only with some reservations to the Oresteia. In performing this failure, the plays discourse on inter-familial violence introduces a question both on kinship relations (is kinship maternal and/or paternal?) and on power relations (is the authorisation of power feminine and/or masculine?). These questions jeopardize the very condition of the possibility of politics, i. e. of a communal life together in the family and in society according to the authority of the law of the Father.

Thus, my contention is that a re-reading of the Oresteia is required, for the following reasons. First, in my interpretation, we can assume that the play performs a gesture of separation in regard to Clytemnestras female roles, without suggesting any definitive answer to the questions it raises. Second, we can argue that the trilogy is not an assertive and normative text, simply responding to the question Is it true that Clytemnestra either is or is not a mother giving life, and therefore a bad wife and usurper of male power?. Quite the contrary, as I hope to show, the Aeschylean play unfolds as a text, which asks to be read in connection to the related question Who is Clytemnestra, i. e. is she a mother giving and nurturing life, and therefore a bad wife and an usurper of male power?.