Killer Queen: Clytemnestra as Goddess, Heroine, and Monster

Abstract

This dissertation examines the mythological figure of Clytemnestra across genre and time. From Homeric poetry through late Greek tragedy, this duplicitous husband-murderer reflects ancient Greek male anxieties about women. I argue that the conceptualization of Clytemnestra shifts over time and according to generic conventions, and that authors portray her as heroic, monstrous, or divine in order to advance their own agendas about the dangerousness of women to male society. We will see that there is no universal conception of Clytemnestra: while many authors treat her as an example of the threat of the feminine, others explore the complexities of her motives, even presenting relatively sympathetic discussions of her situation. Although she is never fully exculpated, her actions are often rationalized as a consequence of her mistreatment by Agamemnon. Such a topic naturally raises questions about structural misogyny in ancient Greece, but as we shall see, many modern scholars have reproduced this misogyny in scholarship on Clytemnestra. Thus, a major goal of this project is to identify and resist the sexism of such scholarship. This is the first comprehensive study of Clytemnestra across time and genre, and integrates both literary and visual sources with the goal of producing an anti-misogynistic, holistic portrait of this important cultural figure.