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BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 205
doing not only good to one's friends but harm to one's enemies" (9: for
a recent critique of this assumption see G. Herman, PCPhS 46 [2000]
7-27). and to verify this cites Medea (as if Medea's excellent revenge did
not involve the murder of her own innocent children). Blundell's Helping
Friends and Harming Enemies (though Blundell's theme is the
problematization of the HFHE code) and Burnett's Revenge in Attic and
Later Tragedy (which actually describes Electra. memorably if questionably.
as "a reification of paradox and disorder" and "a loud, selfchosen.
androgynous spinster-demon"). In the same vein. March seems
content to suggest that Sophocles could. and did. choose simply to adopt
"the Fury-free account of the Odyssey" (18) and to bypass, rather than
present any dialectical contrast with. Aeschylus' and Euripides' constructions
of the return of Orestes and the matricide (7-8).
That the play's ambivalences command attention is well explained in
the introduction to Leona MacLeod's book. which originated as a Dalhousie
University doctoral thesis. As MacLeod shows, both those interpretations
which see in the playa process of justice and deliverance and
those which see it as devaluing or at least problematizing this process
have tended to exclude a middle ground in which the play might be seen
as asserting both the justice of the vengeance and tyrannicide and the
morally negative (aischron) aspects of the means by which they are
achieved. In MacLeod's view. this tension between end and means exists
but is resolved on grounds that are essentially political: the release and
restoration of Orestes and Electra involve not just personal retribution
but the release of Argos from tyranny and the restoration of civic order.
Orestes' use of dolos and Electra's transgression of the norms of
female behaviour are both to some degree shameful by normal standards.
but their shamefulness is a necessary part of the course of action
each must undertake in their extreme. and tragic. circumstances. In a
detailed reading of the play MacLeod traces how this tension is delineated
and resolved. and suggests in particular how the political aspects
of Orestes' and Electra's conduct are to be recognized and evaluated.
On this account Orestes' report of his instructions from Apollo (E1.
36-7) points not only to the (unheroic) use of dolos but to the need for
Orestes to avoid bringing military force. Polynices-like. against his own
community. The chorus represents the oppressed community and accepts
Electra's commitment to communal values. This commitment. as
MacLeod persuasively argues. is an expression of cW