A.N: I was taking my Classical Mythology final today and I was answering one of the questions, I was struck with the desire to write something from Electra's point of view. She gets such a small role in the Oresteia, only showing up at the beginning of Part 2, The Libation Bearers, to mourn her murdered father and call for vengeance against her mother for this terrible crime. Basically, she's there to introduce Orestes as that avenger, and doesn't get a whole lot else. But it seems she has such an interesting history to explore. Having to deal with all of this tragedy, she had to have had so much strength.
I know something like this has probably been done before. I don't see how it couldn't have been. I also know that there is a play called Electra, but I haven't read that one and so please don't hate me if I accidentally contradict something previously established. I'm just basing this on my own thoughts on what I've read.
And wow, this is the first thing I've written – certainly the first thing I've finished – in a very long time. It feels good.
Enjoy! :)
I remember the day they took my sister away.
My mother believes that she is the only one who still grieves for Iphigenia, the only one who still cares about happened, but she is wrong. In a way though, I wish she was right. I wish I could forget it. But the look on my sister's face as they led her from our home – so frightened, so brave – is forever engraved in the paths of my mind. My mother's cries resound in my mind, setting my nerves shivering with their utter primal grief, an echo for my own heartbreak. The men who restrained her are but shadows, silhouettes dark against my mother's pale arms that reached out for her doomed child. So are the men who surrounded Iphigenia, who closed around her as they exited the courtyard, cutting off my last sight of my sister, with her white face turned over her shoulder, red-rimmed eyes fixed on me. Only one man stands out in color: my father, towering over everyone else, his frame radiating with strength and power, red hair flaming in my mind. He led the group, his face looking straight ahead, stoic and frowning. Whether the frown was annoyance at my mother's pleas or a mark of his own sorrow I can no longer say. I have spent so many years hearing the worst of him. Too many years to remember if my father was a good man or not.
I know what the servants say – what most people who are not my mother say: that Agamemnon is a great king, a great leader and warrior, worthy of all praise and respect. He is even now fighting on the fields of Ida, working to break the walls of Troy and redeem our Argive pride, pay back the Trojans for the insult of Helen's capture. Perhaps they are right. I smile when I hear their praise, for a few happy moments proud to have such a noble father, proud to belong to the House of Atrides. But then I reenter the women's chambers and see my mother, working at her loom. Her eyes are ringed by dark circles. She doesn't know that I can hear her, those nights when she cannot sleep for weeping. Those nights when I hear her crying out to the gods that her husband never return from Troy, that Agamemnon die crushed into the Trojan earth as punishment for his crime, for the murder of her child. His own child. My sister.
I cannot understand my father's actions: how a man could do such a thing, buy warfare with the life of his own flesh and blood. His noble quest is tarnished by its price, and I struggle vainly to maintain my pride when I think of it. Yet Mother's grief frightens me, more rage than sorrow, burning with an intensity that nearly ten years has not diminished. I shrink into myself when I hear her pleas for vengeance, wrapping my blankets tighter around me and trying to block out the sound, trying not to believe it. I feel sick that a wife should want so ardently to see her husband dead. Even though a part of me understands, the part that longs for Iphigenia every single day, it still feels wrong. Her hatred makes me fear the day I wed.
The palace is filled with servants, traders, tenants, visitors... My mother's women sit around me, their gossiping and conversation a soft murmur in the background as we spin and weave. They say that life must go on, even though the men have left to trade spears and clash blades with the Trojans. Go it does, but with each passing year I only grow more alone. My mother has been a stranger to me ever since the day Agamemnon's ships sailed towards Ilium, the sails filled by the winds of my sister's sacrifice. I am as transparent as the air when she looks at me, so consumed is she with the memory of her stolen child, with her blame of my father. Only in rare moments does she seem to recall or value that she has a daughter still living. I treasure those moments, as she strokes my hair and calls me beautiful, fair as my sister, then embraces me, grasping my shoulders with a fierce protectiveness. It is in these moments that I feel daring enough to ask about my brother.
Dear Orestes, hope of the family, sent away when but a babe for his own safety. I always felt that he would have been safer at home – there are few who would dare attack the house of Agamemnon – but my mother's sharp look kept me silent. It was not many months after the ships had left and she wore her sorrow like a shroud; her face pale and frame wasted, it was as if she was the one who had died. As he was carried away, Orestes' plump child's hand clutched the bit of cloth that I had woven for him, confusion and displeasure growing in his large eyes as he realized that his doting sister was not coming with him. And then I was left again with the memory not of a sibling, but of a loss.
I ask my mother when he might be allowed to return home. He is surely old enough by now... but she pulls away, as she always does, sighing. She tells me that I know why he was sent away, that I know it is too dangerous. And then she is gone from me again. What this danger is she has never told me, only offering vague hints of threatening neighbor powers, of ambitious men driven by greed who would seek to overthrow the House of Atrides in its master's absence. As the years pass a horrible suspicion creeps into my mind – that she does not want Orestes to return. That when she lost Iphigenia, she forsook all care for the rest of her children. I cannot let myself believe it. Though everything else about the world has crumbled, certainly she must care for her only son, even if not for me. Orestes is the heir to the throne of Argos, while I... I am but a shade. Invisible. Alone. A girl who in losing a sister also lost brother, father and mother.
There are rumors that the war will end soon. I wonder what will happen when it does. What will happen when my father returns. Will my mother forgive him, after so many years? Will I? Is it even possible? My father's cousin Aegisthus is often here of late, bringing news. He keeps much company with my mother, closeted with her for many hours at a time. I grow uneasy at the looks that pass between them, a familiar sickness pooling in my stomach. Dread increases month by month, as each visit grows longer. I see his eyes when they linger on my mother, when they look around our grand halls, filled with rare treasures. Soon I fear he will not leave at all. For the first time since my father left, I find myself truly praying for his safe return. Soon – and it is a feeling I cannot shake – I fear things will become even worse. I had not believed it possible. Now I can only hope that I was right, that things will turn out justly in the end.
I can only hope.