On Rage & Retellings: Elektra by Jennifer Saint
A timely and devastating retelling focused on the stories of women trapped in a cycle of vengeance.
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Hello! Every time I buckle down and write a newsletter, there seems to be a new Current Event that makes it difficult to see straight. I hope you’ll humor my humble offering today with the knowledge that I, like you, am trying my best to weather the storm that is 2022. I know many of you have been donating to local abortion funds, writing coverage of ceaseless miserable news, and trying to get on with the minutiae of sheer existence while it feels like everything is in ruin. Hopefully you’ll be able to sneak in a little reading time for some existential quietude.
The Books
Elektra by Jennifer Saint (Flatiron Books)
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. It is full of spoilers for the book (which includes depictions of sexual violence), but the book is also based on ancient myths that you might already know.
What makes the recent boom of mythology retellings so powerful is that, often, the narrator knows—and dreads—what is to come for them, just as the audience often does. Elektra by Jennifer Saint contributes a timely depiction of feminine rage to a growing canon of retellings that give voice to historically marginalized narrators who know they won’t have a happy ending.
In Elektra, the tragic fates of several women are woven together to showcase the violent acts perpetrated beyond the Trojan War’s battlefield. The book shifts between the perspectives of Clytemnestra, whose eldest daughter is sacrificed by King Agamemnon for a fair wind; Elektra, the youngest daughter who feels abandoned in the face of her mother’s anguish; and Cassandra, a Trojan princess cursed by Apollo to see the future but never have her prophecies believed. While they don’t often intersect in their daily lives, all three women share a potent rage that thematically unifies the book.
Saint depicts their various shades of rage with nuance. When Clytemnestra witnesses Agamemnon’s sacrificial killing of Iphegenia, she is overcome with anger that crystallizes into one clear goal: do whatever it takes to kill him as retribution. Chapters from her perspective are steeped in grief, during which she alienates herself from her surviving children and finds respite only while plotting regicide. Saint’s Clytemnestra harnesses her anguish to rule Mycenae during ten years of war, all for the sake of killing Agamemnon upon his homecoming. Her resilience is a driving force of the book’s action.
Elektra, who felt closest to Agamemnon prior to his departure, grows to resent Clytemnestra for abandoning her and her living siblings. Saint’s Elektra brims with internalized misogyny, hating Clytemnestra as much for years of maternal abandonment as for taking an unseemly lover, Aegisthus, and replacing Agamemnon on the throne. Her simmering discontent ripens to ferocious hatred when Clytemnestra takes her killing blow and prevents a reunion between father and daughter. This betrayal calcifies Elektra’s loyalty to Agamemnon and further corrupts her view of Clytemnestra, leading her to eventually plot sacrilegious matricide. Despite mother and daughter sharing a desire for vengeance, Saint develops their rage in markedly different ways.
And then there is Cassandra, whose rage is a direct result of a man inflicting a punishment. She steadfastly attends the temple of Apollo until he appears before her and bestows the power of precognition upon her. When he then tries to have his way with her, Cassandra begs him to refrain. Enraged, Saint’s Apollo spits venom into her throat, warping his gift into her curse by ensuring nobody believes her prophecies. She spends her life being thought a madwoman, foaming at the mouth out of sheer anger at being dismissed so fully by the world. Her animosity is tangled with desperation to be understood, and her inability to harness her ability results in the downfall of Troy. To me, it is the most heartbreaking depiction of them all.
I first learned about these women through the more paternalistic accounts of Homer and the like: Clytemnestra as a mad queen who cuckolded and killed a Greek hero, Elektra as the psychosexual namesake for the neo-Freudian Electra Complex, and Cassandra as a crazed example of what happens when a mortal crosses a god. Saint takes these oversimplified accounts and coaxes the inherent humanity from each tale, granting each woman a voice for their rightful fury. My favorite chapter illustrates a complication of Aeschylus’s version of events in The Oresteia, when Agamemnon returns to Mycenae with Cassandra as his war prize and concubine, where Clytemnestra kills them both. In Saint’s depiction, Cassandra silently begs Clytemnestra to kill her as an act of mercy. The moments they share together in Cassandra’s last narrated chapter are some of the most poignant of the book and illustrate a dark understanding between two women who know what it means to suffer.
As with Saint’s first book (which I reviewed and thoroughly enjoyed last year), Elektra is a powerful novel because the rage that echoes through every chapter also reverberates in our contemporary lives, where men make decisions that can crush everyone else. While mythology retellings themselves aren’t a new phenomenon, the shape they’ve taken in recent years de-centralizes the male gaze in a deeply satisfying and unique way. By bringing the voices of Clytemnestra, Elektra, and Cassandra to the forefront, Saint is “reclaiming familiar stories and excavating unknown ones to reveal mythology like you’ve never seen it before: inclusive and accessible, capable of page-turning thrills and edge-of-your-seat surprise, even if the spoilers are thousands of years old” (Esquire).
The Other Books
I quickly followed Elektra with The Trojan Women: A Comic by Rosanna Bruno and Anne Carson, which I’ve had on my bedside table for many moons. Where Elektra focused on the House of Atreus back in Mycenae, The Trojan Women focuses on the moments after Troy falls and its women are divided up as war prizes.
I also read The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd for book club, which I will refrain from reviewing until I have discussed it with said book club.
I have more to say, but I will hold my tongue for another day. Bye!