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What Is The Oresteia's Portrayal Of Women

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The Oresteia: The Metaphorical Portrayal of Men and Women The Oresteia is a collection of three tragedies written by Aeschylus for an Athenian tragedy competition in 458 BCE. This trilogy tells the story of a family who is caught up in a whirl of death all caused by the same motivation: revenge. All the dramatic murders end up leading to a civilized justice system being created instead of having people take matters into their own hands. Throughout the plays, Aeschylus portrays women characters as evil and powerful and male characters as weak, which eventually causes their death. Aeschylus’ purpose in portraying his characters this way was to show that unlike his characters, men should be strong and powerful while women should be weak.
Throughout the Oresteia, acts of vengeance show the true message that Aeschylus was trying to send to his readers. Women should not be the powerful ones, but men should be. Two characters that exemplify this are Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Clytemnestra was a very powerful woman in the story. So powerful and assertive that she would often be compared to a man, line 351 says, “My lady, you speak graciously like a prudent man.” While Agamemnon was away for the Trojan war, she took over and ruled the kingdom, which shows her “man” like …show more content…

Aegisthus spent his time in the palace replacing Agamemnon while he was off at war and had no idea this was occurring in his own home. He also helped plan out the death of Agamemnon, but did not have the courage to act it out and help Clytemnestra. Lines 1633-1635 of the Agamemnon say, “How shall you be lord of the men of Argos, you who planned the murder of this man, yet could not dare to act it out and cut him down with your own hand?” Aegisthus’ capability of helping rule over the kingdom is questioned since this whole time he has been letting Clytaemestra be the “man” of the

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