In the Library
Electra
Sophocles, 409 CE
- Form
- Form Play
- Reading time
- Reading time 50 minutes
- Translated by
- Translated by Francis Storr
- Chapters
- Chapters 1
- Length
- Length 12k words
£1.99
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About the book
A woman keeps vigil at her father's grave year after year, refusing to mourn quietly while her mother and her mother's lover hold the throne of Mycenae. Sophocles staged this tragedy near the end of his life, around 409 BCE, returning to the house of Atreus that had already given the Greek stage its darkest stories. Electra waits for her exiled brother Orestes to return and complete the vengeance she cannot perform herself. Her grief has become a discipline, a devotion sharpened into hatred that no chorus can soften. When Orestes arrives, the recognition between brother and sister carries the weight of a decade of unspoken sorrow. The justice the gods demand and the justice a daughter wants are not quite the same thing.