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.'