ABSTRACT
Writing about Clytemnestra means writing about the monstrous wife, the woman who not only kills her husband but, worse, prefers her lover to her children. She chases Orestes away from his father Agamemnon’s palace, where she wishes to rule alone, and treats her daughter Electra like a servant, forcing her into a marriage with a peasant, as Euripides reports. Writing about Clytemnestra also means describing the Greek institution of marriage from another angle, and reconsidering sexual roles and the sanctions taken against those who refuse to comply. Clytemnestra, by choosing her sexual partner and by usurping masculine privileges, presents herself as a destructive element of the established order, simultaneously violating divine and human laws.1 Furthermore, by her excessive behaviour, she demonstrates her incapacity to fulfil the role she has chosen for herself.
