Research Paper on:
The Character of Clytemnestra

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
to portray Clytemnestra as a completely unsympathetic character. After all, she does betray her husband by taking a lover, Aegisthus, during Agamemnons ten-year absence, and cold-heartedly murders Agamemnon by stabbing  him to death on his return. However, Aeschylus offers considerable motivation for these acts. He forces the audience to see Clytemnestras point of view. Nevertheless, by making Clytemnestra?s most defining  characteristic her duplicity, Aeschylus obviously intends for the audience to see her as conniving and driven by her love of power. The beginning of the play contains a great  deal of exposition in which the audience is informed of all of the details of the Trojan War?how Agamemnon has been away fighting this war for ten long years. Clytemnestra  has just received a signal that the war is finally over and she knows that Agamemnon will be returning. When Clytemnestra declares her joy at the news to the chorus,  the audience has the first signs of her hypocritical nature. Considering the homecoming that she is planning for Agamemnon, her words are filled with irony when she says, " What  day beams fairer on a womans eyes /Than this, whereon she flings the portal wide, /To hail her lord, heaven-shielded, home from war?" (Aeschylus agamemnon.html). Throughout the first part  of the play, Clytemnestra appears to be a long-suffering (due to her husbands absence) but a dutiful wife. She unequivocally declares her love for Agamemnon upon his triumphant entry, "Shame  shall not bid me shrink lest ye should see /The love I bear my lord" (Aeschylus agamemnon.html). However, it is at this point that the audience begins to see  something of Clytemnestras true nature. She has brought tapestries to make a path so that Agamemnon can walk into the palace without touching the ground. Agamemnon protests that this is