The Wounded Woman. Linda Schierse Leonard
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he had done, but it was too late.
Angrily, Agamemnon accused Menelaus of being a dupe of beauty and of being willing to throw away his reason and honor for it. Menelaus accused Agamemnon of agreeing to the sacrifice of Iphigenia to save his own power. While the two brothers were fighting angrily, Iphigenia arrived, and Agamemnon felt powerless in the grip of fate. Even though Menelaus in a moment of sudden compassion realized he had been wrong and urged Agamemnon not to sacrifice his daughter, Agamemnon now felt compelled to go ahead with it. He was afraid that if he refused, the enraged masses would revolt, sacrificing not only Iphigenia but himself as well. And so King Agamemnon, ruled by his own service to power and to the glory of Greece, and by his fear, felt forced to kill his daughter Iphigenia.
When Iphigenia and her mother, Clytemnestra, arrived in Aulis, they were happy with the plan for Iphigenia to marry Achilles. But Iphigenia found her father strangely sad and worried. And when Agamemnon commanded Clytemnestra to leave Aulis before her daughter’s wedding, she thought this strange and refused. Finally she discovered the plot to sacrifice her daughter and she was outraged. Achilles, too, became angry, learning he had been duped by Agamemnon, and swore to protect Iphigenia with his life. In horrified despair, Clytemnestra confronted Agamemnon with what she had heard. At first he evaded and denied the accusation, but finally he admitted to the awful truth. Incensed, Clytemnestra charged him with more shame—that he had killed her first husband and her baby and had taken her by force. But when her own father condoned the marriage, she submitted and had become an obedient wife. Clytemnestra tried to shame Agamemnon into changing his mind. And Iphigenia pleaded with her father for her life. Both asked why Helen, who was Clytemnestra’s sister and Iphigenia’s aunt, should be more important than his daughter. But Agamemnon, feeling helpless before the demonic lust for power of the army, pledged his first duty to Greece and said he had no other choice.
At first Iphigenia cursed Helen; she cursed her murderous father; and she cursed the lustful army bound for Troy. But when even Achilles was helpless against the army’s raging masses, she gave in. She resolved to die nobly for Greece, since all Hellas looked to her for the sailing of the fleet. Why should Achilles die for her, she asked, when “One man is of more value than a host of women.”2 And who was she, a mortal, to oppose the divine Artemis? But the Greek Chorus, speaking for the truth, replied, “Your nature, princess, is indeed noble and true; But events fester, and divinity is sick.”3 Nevertheless, Iphigenia went nobly to her death, absolving her father and telling her mother not to be angry and not to hate him.4
What view of the feminine is implied in this drama? Woman is regarded as man’s possession! The three prominent female characters are regarded as objects owned by man. Because Menelaus regards Helen as his possession, the loss of the beautiful Helen initiates the Greeks to war on the Trojans to retrieve her. Clytemnestra, the obedient wife, is regarded by Agamemnon as his to rule. And Iphigenia is a daughter who can be sacrificed by her father. Hence, the feminine is not allowed to reveal itself from its own center, but is reduced to those forms compatible with the prevailing masculine view.
At the same time, the prevailing masculine goal is power; man’s first duty is to Greece, no matter what the cost. Helen’s seduction by Paris is really an opportunity for the Greeks to make war on the Trojans. As Agamemnon later realizes when it is too late, “A strange lust rages with demonic power throughout the Hellene army…”5 And it is this power lust which ultimately demands Iphigenia’s sacrifice.
This drama also shows a split within the feminine. One role is allotted to Helen who personifies beauty. Another is given to Clytemnestra, the obedient and dutiful wife and mother. These two forms of the feminine are the only roles for women that this play presents. The feminine realm is devalued by being reduced to the service of men either through beauty or obedience. The ideal of beauty reduces the woman’s worth to a mere projection of men’s desire and puts her in the puella position of girl-like dependence. And dutiful obedience reduces her to the status of servant to a male master. In each case she exists not in and of herself, but has her identity only in relation to man’s needs. The father, King Agamemnon, supports this devaluation of the feminine when ultimately he agrees to sacrifice his daughter so that the Greeks can bring back Helen. And he expects his wife, Clytemnestra, to be ruled by his decree. His own ambition and need for power is primary, and the welfare of his daughter is only secondary.
Just as the two sisters, Helen and Clytemnestra, personify the split feminine ideals of beauty and obedience, so the two brothers, Menelaus and Agamemnon, are ruled in soul by these two opposites. Menelaus, the boyish brother, is so captivated by Helen’s beauty that he is willing to sacrifice all else—a whole army of men and even his niece’s life. In contrast, Agamemnon has sold his soul to serve Greece’s lust for power and for his own ambition to be king even though this position isolates him and cuts him off from expressing his human fatherly feelings. Perhaps the worst wound Agamemnon suffers is to be cut off from his tears. As he confesses:
What a man-trap of compulsive Fate I have fallen into! Some divine power, cleverer than all my cleverness has tricked and defeated me. To be low-born, I see, has its advantages: A man can weep, and tell his sorrows to the world. A king endures sorrows no less; but the demand for dignity governs our life, and we are slaves to the masses. I am ashamed to weep; and equally I am ashamed not to weep, in such a depth of grief.6
What is the trap that Agamemnon, the king and father, has fallen into? Spirit seems to be impotent, symbolized by the lack of wind. And as the Chorus has announced: “…events fester, and divinity is sick.” Agamemnon is caught in man’s willful striving for power in the name of Greece, and so his daughter is sacrificed in the name of this end to be the soul of Greece. And this requires her death as human. The king, as the visible manifestation of the divine principle, endorses values that are consciously recognized by the culture. In this culture, the feminine is reduced in value to being merely the object of masculine ends. Hence in the drama the women have no real power. Helen, as a beauty object, is seduced. Clytemnestra, as wife, is to obey her husband’s rule. As a mother, she does have some rule in the home, but when it comes to saving her daughter’s life, she is powerless. Iphigenia, as daughter, is to be sacrificed for the political power of the state. As she says to Agamemnon when she pleads for her life, “…my tears are my one magic; I’ll use them, for I can weep.”7 But her pure innocence and her tears are of no avail when political power is the highest value. Thus, the culture’s devaluation of the feminine, which King Agamemnon endorses, leads to the sacrifice of his daughter. And although Iphigenia is pure and noble and forgives her father when she sees the finality of his position, with her submission to her fate she finally acknowledges this devaluation of the feminine. She sacrifices herself for Greece and declares “One man is of more value than a host of women.” Accepting the soul projection of her father, she says:
…let my father pace around the altar, following the sun. I come to give to all Hellenes deliverance and victory! Lead me, a maiden born to overthrow great Troy and all her people.8
Iphigenia, in becoming the soul of Greece, gives up her own feminine identity and the value of her tears “…since at the altar is no place for tears.”9 But although she submits and forgives, her mother, left in rage and grief, cannot forgive. And so the story of the family is continued when, in other plays, Clytemnestra murders Agamemnon to revenge Iphigenia’s death, and in retribution of his father’s death, the son, Orestes, murders his mother, Clytemnestra.10
The father-daughter sacrifice has its roots in the dominance of masculine power over the feminine. When the masculine is cut off from feminine values, when it does not allow the feminine principle to manifest itself in its own way out of its own center, when it does not allow the feminine its manifold number of forms but reduces it only to those which serve masculine ends, it loses its relation to the values of the feminine realm. It is then that the masculine becomes brute-like and sacrifices not only the outer woman but also its inner feminine side.
The image of this condition is expressed by Hexagram 12, “Standstill-Stagnation,” found in the I Ching, the Chinese Taoist book of wisdom. The I Ching’s basic image of the cosmos and of human existence is based on the relationship between the feminine and masculine principles. When these two polarities are