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Masterplots, Fourth Edition

Electra

by Raymond M. Archer

First produced: 1903; first published, 1904 (English translation, 1908)

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Tragedy

Time of plot: Antiquity

Locale: Mycenae, Greece

The Story:

As the reddish glow of the setting sun floods the inner courtyard of the palace, five women servants come to fill their pitchers at the well. While they are speaking, Electra, Agamemnon’s eldest daughter, appears, dressed in ragged clothing. Startled by their presence, she quickly disappears like a frightened animal. Four of the women exchange contemptuous observations about the mourning rites that Electra practices each evening for her father, and they ridicule both her and the wretched conditions of life that her mother and Aegisthus impose upon her. Disdainfully, they mention that she prefers eating on the ground with the dogs to sharing the servants’ table, and that she insults all the servants of the house and stares at them fiercely like a wild cat. When the young fifth servant expresses her admiration for the abused princess, she is ordered inside, where she is promptly beaten for her insolence. Their pitchers filled, the servant women reenter the palace.

Electra returns and, speaking alone, reveals her secret thoughts and feelings. She recalls in vivid detail the murder of her father who, upon his return from the Trojan War, was at this very twilight hour slaughtered in his bath with an ax by his wife and her lover. She prays for her father’s spirit to appear to her again, promising that his blood will one day be avenged. She vows to sacrifice at his grave when that day comes and swears that she, along with her sister Chrysothemis and her brother Orestes, will dance around his tomb in royal pageantry to commemorate his greatness.

Chrysothemis appears in the doorway, interrupting Electra’s fantasy, to alert her that she overheard Clytemnestra and Aegisthus plotting to imprison her in a dungeon. Electra replies contemptuously, which leads Chrysothemis to plead with her to understand her personal unhappiness. She explains that if they are to relinquish the hope of Orestes’ return and his subsequent revenge, they will both be able to lead relatively normal lives, to love and marry, to bear children, and to experience the joys of family life. She will quite willingly tolerate the injustice of their father’s murder in exchange for an ordinary happy life. Not so Electra, who reproaches her sister severely and reassures her that their brother will indeed return one day, and that together they will punish the criminals. Sounds from within alert them of Clytemnestra’s approach. Chrysothemis flees, but Electra resolutely awaits a confrontation.

Clytemnestra, covered with jewels and charms that she believes to possess magical powers, appears in the window with her attendants and speaks insultingly to Electra, who answers deceptively, inducing her mother to descend into the courtyard to seek her counsel. Clytemnestra complains that her sleep is often troubled by bad dreams and that a terrible “nothing” torments her soul, causing her to feel horror of sinking alive into chaos; whatever demon is responsible can be appeased by an appropriate sacrifice, and she solicits assistance in discovering it. Electra offers elusive and evasive responses: To dispel the dreams, a man of their house, but yet a stranger, must slay some unidentified impure woman in any place, at any hour. Receiving indifferent answers to her questions about Orestes’ return, Electra, overcome by hysterical rage, screams that Clytemnestra herself must be the sacrificial victim and that Orestes will slay her with the same ax she used to kill his father. Taken aback, Clytemnestra shakes with voiceless fear.

A servant enters and whispers something in Clytemnestra’s ear, at which the expression on her face changes to one of evil triumph; calling for lights, she sweeps inside. Chrysothemis returns to tell Electra of the arrival of two strangers who announce the death of Orestes. A young manservant comes looking for a horse, so that he might carry such important news immediately to Aegisthus. Electra now determines to kill the guilty rulers herself, and when her frightened sister refuses to participate in such a deed and runs away, Electra resolves to accomplish it alone. She is digging in the earth for the ax that she buried years before when she notices a stranger enter the courtyard.

She speaks with him cautiously, since he claims to have information about Orestes’ death, but when she reveals her name, he discloses that he is indeed Orestes. Brother and sister embrace. Rejoicing at their reunion, Electra explains that the expectation of his return sustained her through terrible times. A servant leads Orestes into the palace to meet the queen, and, soon after, her screams can be heard. The servants become frightened and bewildered. When Aegisthus returns home, Electra meets him with a torch and conducts him to the palace door. Within minutes, he appears at a window crying for help, but he is quickly dragged out of sight.

Chrysothemis enters the courtyard with other women and tells her sister that the wicked are all slaughtered by Orestes and his followers. Electra seems to be able to hear only the triumphant music in her own head, to which she dances like a maenad, arms stretched wide, knees flung high, in a mad dance of triumph. She suddenly falls to the ground, while Chrysothemis pounds on the palace door, calling helplessly for her brother.

Critical Evaluation:

Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s poetic tragedy Electra is an adaptation of Sophocles’ drama Élektra (418-410 b.c.e.; Electra, 1649). The work adheres closely to the structure and dramatic organization of the original but omits the chorus of women of Mycenae and develops and interprets the poetic materials in an entirely original fashion. In some instances, Hofmannsthal also drew on Aeschylus’s Oresteia (458 b.c.e.; English translation, 1777) and Euripides’ Élektra (413 b.c.e.; Electra, 1782) for promptings pertaining to diction and poetic imagery.

Hofmannsthal added no new twists to the plot of his Greek sources, but his conception of the characters differs radically from theirs. In Sophocles’ play, Electra is overwhelmed by grief and sorrow, and Clytemnestra seeks to justify her crimes with rational explanations. Orestes returns wielding a sword of justice with which to reestablish order within the corrupted kingdom, and he is not tormented by the Furies, as in Aeschylus and Euripides. Hofmannsthal created an Electra possessed by an insane, all-consuming hatred and sustained by the expectation of eventual revenge; his superstitious Clytemnestra is tormented by insomnia produced by a guilty conscience; his Orestes (Hofmannsthal had at one time considered omitting him entirely from the play) is merely an agent of revenge, a character who lacks any strong personal definition. The secondary characters of Aegisthus and Chrysothemis are retained relatively unchanged, though the latter appears somewhat less sympathetic and more willing to serve as a partner in evil in the modern work.

Hofmannsthal’s decision to omit the chorus found in all the Greek versions resulted in substantial shifts in the meaning and emotional tone of the drama. In Sophocles, the chorus functioned as sensible representatives of a traditional moral order. There, Electra found the chorus sympathetic to her sorrowful laments, and their commiseration and approval of her grief legitimized her sufferings; the women of Mycenae represented uninvolved persons who could judge morally from a position emotionally outside the framework of the tragic situation. Lacking an anchor in any such continuing moral order, Hofmannsthal’s characters struggle in a fundamental moral chaos that remains unredeemed at the play’s conclusion by either choral statements affirming the restoration of traditional values, as in Sophocles, or a strong-minded Orestes, who promises to establish a new moral order for his new society. Hofmannsthal thereby enunciates his theme that at the dawn of the twentieth century human beings stand alone in the ruins of their old values yet are powerless to create significant new ones to replace them.

The world of Hofmannsthal’s Electra is one in which hatred and oppression are the ruling forces in society, and political legitimacy is shown to reside in the effective use of force to gain and maintain power and authority. Other ideas that shape Hofmannsthal’s world derive from such sources as Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer’s 1895 study on hysteria and Freud’s Die Traumdeutung(1900; The Interpretation of Dreams, 1913). Like most intellectuals at the time, Hofmannsthal owned both books and was thoroughly familiar with them. His depictions of neurotic obsession in the character of Electra and those of guilt-induced dreams in the character of Clytemnestra rank among the finest early examples of the impact Freud had on literature.

Hofmannsthal employs ordinary, mundane language, similar to that of Sophocles and Aeschylus, which he arranges into simple, clear, and direct lines of free verse that convey the characters’ thoughts forcefully and vividly. His frequent use of violent images relating to blood, murder, slaughter, and butchery, which impart this work’s gruesome tone, has a precedent in the Greek sources: Where Hofmannsthal has Electra urge her brother on by saying, “Once more, strike!” Sophocles wrote, “Strike her again, strike!” Eschewing any display of feats of poetic virtuosity, Hofmannsthal avoids a stilted and convoluted rhetorical style and shuns any images reminiscent of “lofty and sublime” imitations of classical Greek harmony and serenity. His clear, simple style was easily understood by a theater audience, and it proved to be ideal for being set to music in an opera.

When the German composer Richard Strauss saw Max Reinhardt’s production of Electra in Berlin, he immediately recognized its operatic potential. He had met Hofmannsthal in Paris in 1900, and the two had enthusiastically considered the mutual benefits to be derived from working together. The stage play Electra, appropriately modified to meet the musical requirements of an opera libretto, offered an ideal opportunity for collaboration and proved to be the first of several of the greatest musical-dramatic collaborations in operatic history. Serious work on the opera began in 1906. Hofmannsthal’s drama of approximately 1,500 lines was too long and was reduced to about 825 lines, including two new short passages Strauss requested from the poet. Hofmannsthal’s conception remained intact; cuts merely eliminated elaborations from speeches and insignificant scenes of comic relief, and reduced the importance of minor characters. The opera was first produced in Dresden in 1909 and, though received coolly at first, was soon recognized as a masterpiece. It is the operatic version, rather than Hofmannsthal’s spoken drama, that has most consistently held the international stage and become known to a worldwide audience.

Further Reading

1 

Bottenberg, Joanna. Shared Creation: Words and Music in the Hofmannsthal-Strauss Operas. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. Examines the collaboration of Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss that resulted in the creation of six operas, including Electra.

2 

Hamburger, Michael. Hofmannsthal: Three Essays. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972. An excellent introduction to Hofmannsthal’s poems, plays, and libretti for English-speaking readers.

3 

_______. A Proliferation of Prophets: Essays on German Writers from Nietzsche to Brecht. Manchester, England: Carcanet Press, 1983. Contains a highly readable essay tracing Hofmannsthal’s poetic and artistic development, with advice for readers new to his work on how to approach his poetry. Includes a very good section on Electra.

4 

Kovach, Thomas A., ed. A Companion to the Works of Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 2002. Collection of essays analyzing Hofmannsthal’s works, including discussions of his lyric drama, collaborations with Richard Strauss, and his works’ reception in the twentieth century.

5 

Puffett, Derrick, ed. Richard Strauss: “Elektra.” New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. A collection of eight essays from renowned scholars that examine in depth all aspects of the opera based on Hofmannsthal’s drama.

6 

Scott, Jill. “Beyond Tragic Catharsis: Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Elektra.” In Electra After Freud: Myth and Culture. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005. Analyzes the depiction of Electra in Hofmannsthal’s play and other literary works in which writers transformed the ancient Greek myth.

7 

Strathausen, Carsten. “Hofmannsthal and the Voice of Language.” In The Look of Things: Poetry and Vision Around 1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. A study of German poetry, philosophy, and visual media around 1900. Describes how Hofmannsthal and other writers used language as a means of competing with photography and film.

8 

Ward, Philip. Hofmannsthal and Greek Myth: Expression and Performance. New York: Peter Lang, 2002. Examines why and how Hoffmansthal adapted Greek mythology in his works. In one chapter, Ward focuses on how Hoffmansthal used myth to depict women’s behavior in Electra.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Archer, Raymond M. "Electra." Masterplots, Fourth Edition, edited by Laurence W. Mazzeno, Salem Press, 2010. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=MP4_15929820000333.
APA 7th
Archer, R. M. (2010). Electra. In L. W. Mazzeno (Ed.), Masterplots, Fourth Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Archer, Raymond M. "Electra." Edited by Laurence W. Mazzeno. Masterplots, Fourth Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2010. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.