On Clytemnestra and Femininity

Picture from Tanghalang Ateneo's web site

Recently I was lucky enough to be able to watch Tanghalang Ateneo’s production of the Oresteian Trilogy translated into Filipino, “Ang Oresteyas.” It is the infamous story of possibly the most dysfunctional family in literature, about Agamemnon (who murders his eldest daughter Iphigenia), his wife Clytemnestra (who kills her husband to take revenge for her slain daughter), their other daughter Electra (who loves her father and witnesses his murder) and their son Orestes (who slays his mother for his father’s sake). I will never forget the experience of seeing the Greek tragedy excellently acted out in all its bloody glory, which deserves another blog entry all by itself!

In the midst of watching the play, I couldn’t help but reflect a great deal on Queen Clytemnestra, who some might say is the central figure of the tragedy. She was a passionate woman who only ever truly loved her husband, but was forced to kill the love of her life because of what he did to their daughter. There were several lines in the play referring to her as a monstrosity, as a woman who only played at being a mother but had more “balls” than ordinary men, due to her strength of will. And while the modern in me couldn’t help but admire the idea of a strong “iron lady,” I felt disquiet, too, at the idea that one couldn’t be truly a woman if one didn’t fit the motherly virtuous Madonna image which was the convention in society that time.

Clytemnestra seemed so “foreign” because she was different, she didn’t subscribe to her society’s standards of femininity. And it seems to me that even today, women (more than men) are greatly pressured by society’s dictates to act a certain way.

It amazes me, for instance, how often little squabbles erupt in my Grade One classroom, over something as inconsequential as “crushes.” One little girl will accuse a boy of having a crush on her and wanting to make her his “girl friend,” something the boy vehemently denies. (Or sometimes it’s the other way around!) And while it may seem cute at first glance, I can’t help but be amazed at how precocious their awareness of “crushes” and significant others are.

So from a very young age, girls are taught by society that their value as a female lies in the ability to attract a mate, and that her value increases the more suitors she has. And anyone who went to high school knows that, for many girls, school is more about looking pretty for the good looking basketball players than developing a critical mind through scholarly pursuits. (I’m sure Malala Yousafzai would like to have a VERY strong word with those young girls…)

I suppose we can all learn a great deal from celibates around us, when we behold the quiet beauty that radiates from the faces of nuns and the solid strength that emanates from the truly holy priests. Surrounded by this bombardment of sexuality and the commodification of “love,” these celibate individuals remind us of the revolutionary power of virginity, of single hood.

When you really think about it, singlehood is not the negative state that HIMYM would have us believe, that it reflects on the person’s inability to attract attention from the opposite sex.

As Kathleen Norris put it, “Virginity is defined as being whole, at one in oneself. Singleness of heart is a state of being that returns to God in wholeness… this wholeness is not that of having experience all experiences, but of something reserved, preserved, or reclaimed for what it was made for. It is the ability to stay centered, with oneness of purpose. What might it mean for a girl today to be as the early virgin martyrs were and defy the conventions of female behavior? She would presume to have a life, a body, an identity apart from male definitions of what constitutes her femininity… her life would articulate the love of the community that had formed her and would continue to strengthen her.”

And so when some of my girl high school students ask me about advice on love and matters of the heart, I gently try to “sell” this idea of waiting, of feeling that it’s OK to hold out for the right man, at the right time. Because it saddens me to see so many girls run to the arms of immature boys incapable of having a real relationship, all because of society’s pressure on the girl to have a boyfriend “or else you’re worthless as a female.”

For your prince will come, one day. And then our Father will happily say, “Go and make your lives so intertwined that they feel like one flesh.”