Electra

Electra is a daughter of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, and Clytemnestra. In Euripides's Orestes she names her own family: her sisters Chrysothemis and Iphigenia, and her brother Orestes. Homer never names her. When Agamemnon lists his daughters in Homer's Iliad, they are Chrysothemis, Laodice and Iphianassa. Aelian's Varia Historia reports how the early lyric poet Xanthus closed that gap. Electra, Xanthus said, was first called Laodice. The Argives renamed her after her father's death, because she stayed so long without a husband or a marriage bed.

The name belongs to other figures too. Hesiod's Theogony gives it to an Oceanid, the mother of Iris and the Harpies. Apollodorus's Library gives it to one of the Pleiades, the daughters of Atlas.

Her story begins with her father's murder on his return from Troy. Apollodorus's Epitome says Electra smuggled her young brother Orestes away to Strophius in Phocis, who raised him with his own son Pylades. In Sophocles's Electra she recalls stealing him away with her own hands to save him from death.

In Aeschylus's Libation Bearers, Electra brings libations to her father's grave on her mother's orders. Instead of her mother's prayer, she asks Hermes and her dead father for an avenger. Then she finds a lock of hair on the tomb that looks like her own, and footprints that match hers. Orestes steps forward, and a piece of her own weaving convinces her. Together they call on Agamemnon's spirit for help. Orestes then sends her into the house to keep watch, and she does not appear in the play again.

Sophocles makes her the centre of his Electra. A messenger brings a false report that Orestes died in a chariot race at the Pythian games at Delphi. Electra then resolves to kill Aegisthus herself. When her sister Chrysothemis refuses to help, she declares that the deed must be done by her hand alone. She weeps over an urn she believes holds her brother's ashes, until Orestes proves himself with their father's signet. When Clytemnestra cries out inside the palace, Electra calls to him: "Stab her doubly, if you can!" When Aegisthus begs to speak, she urges her brother to kill him at once.

Euripides moves her out of the palace. In his Electra, Aegisthus fears she will bear a son who will avenge Agamemnon. So he gives her to a poor farmer, who tells the audience he has never touched her. Orestes comes to their cottage, and an old servant knows him by a scar on his brow. Electra plans her mother's death herself. She sends word that she has given birth, knowing Clytemnestra will come. Afterwards Orestes says he covered his eyes and drove the sword into his mother's throat. Electra answers that she urged him on and put her hand to the sword with him.

The sequel belongs to Euripides's Orestes. Six days after the killing, Electra nurses her brother while the Furies drive him mad, and Argos votes on whether both of them must die. It is Electra who devises the plan to seize Hermione, the daughter of Helen, as a hostage against Menelaus. At the close, Apollo orders Orestes to give his sister to Pylades, to whom she had already been promised.

Euripides's Electra ends the same way, with Castor and Polydeuces, her mother's brothers, ordering the marriage. Apollodorus's Epitome agrees that Orestes married her to Pylades. Pausanias saw her tomb at Mycenae and cites Hellanicus for her two sons by Pylades, Medon and Strophius.

The three tragedians agree that Orestes strikes the fatal blow. They disagree on nearly everything Electra does. In Aeschylus's Libation Bearers she prays for vengeance and recognises her brother, then leaves the stage before the killing. In Sophocles's Electra the murder happens offstage, but Electra stands at the door and cries encouragement as her mother dies. In Euripides's Electra she plans the trap herself and holds the sword with her brother. His Orestes goes further and has her say she shared in the murder as far as a woman could.

The recognition changes too. Aeschylus uses a lock of hair, matching footprints and a piece of weaving. Euripides seems to answer him directly. His Electra dismisses all three tokens: a man's hair differs from a woman's, rocky ground holds no footprint, and a child's cloak would no longer fit a grown man. The scar settles it instead. Sophocles uses neither and has Orestes show their father's signet.

Who saved the boy Orestes is also disputed. Sophocles and Apollodorus give the rescue to Electra. Euripides's Electra gives it to their father's old servant, and Pindar's eleventh Pythian ode to his nurse Arsinoe.

Her marriage is the last disagreement. Sophocles keeps her unmarried, and she complains that Aegisthus will never let her bear children. Only Euripides gives her a husband before the revenge, the poor farmer. Her marriage to Pylades comes from Euripides's two plays, Apollodorus's Epitome and Pausanias.

Electra is one of the most retold figures of Greek tragedy. Richard Strauss's opera Elektra was first performed at Dresden in 1909, to a libretto Hugo von Hofmannsthal adapted from his own 1903 play. Eugene O'Neill's trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) moves the Oresteia to New England after the American Civil War.

Her name is best known today through psychology. Carl Jung coined the term "Electra complex" in 1913, in The Theory of Psychoanalysis, as a female counterpart to Freud's Oedipus complex, named after Oedipus. Freud rejected the term in his 1931 essay Female Sexuality, because it implied the two sexes develop in parallel. The idea has nothing to do with the ancient plays beyond the name.