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Catherine Clément has written of opera as the undoing of women. She is consistent in her application of this theory to Strauss's opera Elektra, and she interprets the character Elektra narrowly as the instrument of two males: her father Agamemnon and her brother Orestes. According to Clément, Elektra, as her mother before her, simply carries out phallocratic dictates, and, "The dawn rising over Mycenae is the dawn of our repression."10 These views are echoed by Specht and Overhoff, so that, "Elektra seems no more than a vessel to contain mourning, the mirror that reflects Agamemnon: he is the 'true hero' of the opera."11 |
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Susan McClary would like to call Elektra's death madness, but I think this undercuts the heroism of her climactic dance.12 Since Foucault, madness has been increasingly seen as difficult to define. Who defines it and what are the underlying epistemological or political premises of the definition? When bombing of certain countries is called a defense of freedom, but bombing by others acts of terrorism, one sees the power wielded by rhetoric. |
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I think the time is ripe for feminist interpretations of predominantly male-dominated art forms, but a disservice is rendered both artists and women when these interpretations contribute to a new restrictive code in which female characters are not allowed the freedom of the males. It seems to me perverse that a man can die in glory or as a result of passion, as Ajax does, or Werther, Tristan, Romeo, Siegfried, while women are deprived of this defining and passionate gesture because of the dictates of a new political correctness. A comparable criticism applied to the male would say all of these characters (except Ajax, who is quite explicit in rejecting female dominance, or even influence, from Athena to Tekmessa) died or committed suicide mainly as a result of being dominated by female characters. |
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I would like to suggest a different reading, one that would empower Elektra again with the autonomy and yearning for freedom that Sophokles originally gave her. I claim Elektra acts in a complex way to bring about the goals of her particular passions, and, like Clément and Ewans, I shall use the modern opera as my critical tool for elucidating Sophokles' controversial heroine, whose significance Heiner Müller thinks is important for under- |
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10 In addition she claims, "From crime to crime . . . the family history is perpetuated. It can come to an end later only though the intervention of men and the invention of law . . . The women, the survivors, fight one another, each one the bearer of a man . . . the mother, dead . . . with her the historic undoing and defeat of femininity begins . . . The victorious woman, the one who defends the father's power, will, with her vengeance, have betrayed the cause of women," Clément (1988) 767. |
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11 See Abbate (1989) 111. She cites elucidating statements by Overhoff (1978) and Specht (1921). |
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12 "The chromatic excess of the madwoman became even more intense with Elektra . . .," Clément (1988) 101. |
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