Hofmannsthal, 'Elektra' and the representation of women's behaviour through myth

Authors
Citation
Pm. Ward, Hofmannsthal, 'Elektra' and the representation of women's behaviour through myth, GER LIFE L, 53(1), 2000, pp. 37-55
Citations number
57
Categorie Soggetti
Literature
Journal title
GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS
ISSN journal
00168777 → ACNP
Volume
53
Issue
1
Year of publication
2000
Pages
37 - 55
Database
ISI
SICI code
0016-8777(200001)53:1<37:H'ATRO>2.0.ZU;2-3
Abstract
In Elektra Hofmannsthal created a drama more of its time than he cared to a dmit, but he concealed this specificity in the 'eternal' materials of myth. The play came into being in response to the promptings of a director (Max Reinhardt) and an actress (Gertrud Eysoldt). Contemporaries received the pl ay as a revision, either for good or bad, of accepted ideas of the Greeks. In a climate which identified a parallel between the 'cathartic' effect of Greek tragedy and the 'cathartic' treatment of hysteria in the new psychoan alysis, Elektra was readily understandable as an 'hysteric.' Hofmannsthal d oes not present her specifically as such but participates in a fin de siecl e trend to use hysteria as a synecdoche for female behaviours which challen ged the status quo. Hofmannsthal's own attitudes to women imply an anxiety about counter-cultural behaviour which, in Elektra, he mediates through two literary precedents: Sophocles' Electra and Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris. The article concludes by illustrating how Hofmannsthal constructs Elektra' s behaviour as 'improper.'