her father was working for a creative rock musician and she was proud of him. It was as though the dreams and her life were dancing together, each making new movements in turn so that she was able to move into a new rhythmic way of being. Through her pursuit of self-knowledge and relating to her dreams in therapy, she was able to connect with her playful, flowing feeling side, and her femininity and creativity were released. When she experienced the compensatory energies of the father archetype within, the old wound coming from her stern, rigid, and unaccepting father began to heal.
CHAPTER TWO
SACRIFICE OF THE DAUGHTER
Your nature, princess, is indeed noble and true;
But events fester, and divinity is sick.
Euripides
The father-daughter wound is a condition of our culture and, to that extent, the plight of all men and women today. Women frequently are considered inferior to men. Men often are put down if they show feminine qualities. Implicit in the father-daughter wound is a disturbed relation between the masculine and feminine principles.1 And this affects not only individuals but also partners, groups, and whole societies. Both men and women suffer from it. Both are confused about their own identities and roles vis-à-vis the other.
The roots of the father-daughter wound are deep and can be seen clearly in the Greek drama Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides. The drama shows how a father comes to sacrifice his daughter and portrays the wound the father feels when he is driven to this end. It also reveals the limited view of the feminine in a patriarchally ruled society. Iphigenia is the oldest and the most beloved daughter of King Agamemnon. And yet, in the play, she is sacrificed, sentenced to death by her very own father, who loves her most dearly. How can this happen? How is it possible for a father to sacrifice a daughter?
At the play’s beginning we find Agamemnon in deep despair, halfway to madness, because he has agreed to the sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia. The Hellenes had pledged war on Troy because the Trojan, Paris, had stolen Helen, most beautiful of women and the wife of Agamemnon’s brother, Menelaus. But when the army went to Aulis Bay, ready to sail for battle, there was no wind. Crazed with the lust for battle, the army became impatient and Agamemnon’s rule was threatened. Fearing the loss of his power and glory and the command of the army, Agamemnon consulted an oracle that said he must sacrifice his first-born daughter for the greater glory of Greece. The sacrifice was to be made to the goddess Artemis in exchange for wind to sail. In despair, Agamemnon finally agreed to the decree and sent for Iphigenia, saying that she was to be married to Achilles. But this was only a pretext to get Iphigenia to Aulis for the sacrifice. Later Agamemnon realized the madness of what he had done, but it was too late.
Angrily, Agamemnon accused Menelaus of being a dupe of beauty and of being willing to throw away his reason and honor for it. Menelaus accused Agamemnon of agreeing to the sacrifice of Iphigenia to save his own power. While the two brothers were fighting angrily, Iphigenia arrived, and Agamemnon felt powerless in the grip of fate. Even though Menelaus in a moment of sudden compassion realized he had been wrong and urged Agamemnon not to sacrifice his daughter, Agamemnon now felt compelled to go ahead with it. He was afraid that if he refused, the enraged masses would revolt, sacrificing not only Iphigenia but himself as well. And so King Agamemnon, ruled by his own service to power and to the glory of Greece, and by his fear, felt forced to kill his daughter Iphigenia.
When Iphigenia and her mother, Clytemnestra, arrived in Aulis, they were happy with the plan for Iphigenia to marry Achilles. But Iphigenia found her father strangely sad and worried. And when Agamemnon commanded Clytemnestra to leave Aulis before her daughter’s wedding, she thought this strange and refused. Finally she discovered the plot to sacrifice her daughter and she was outraged. Achilles, too, became angry, learning he had been duped by Agamemnon, and swore to protect Iphigenia with his life. In horrified despair, Clytemnestra confronted Agamemnon with what she had heard. At first he evaded and denied the accusation, but finally he admitted to the awful truth. Incensed, Clytemnestra charged him with more shame—that he had killed her first husband and her baby and had taken her by force. But when her own father condoned the marriage, she submitted and had become an obedient wife. Clytemnestra tried to shame Agamemnon into changing his mind. And Iphigenia pleaded with her father for her life. Both asked why Helen, who was Clytemnestra’s sister and Iphigenia’s aunt, should be more important than his daughter. But Agamemnon, feeling helpless before the demonic lust for power of the army, pledged his first duty to Greece and said he had no other choice.
At first Iphigenia cursed Helen; she cursed her murderous father; and she cursed the lustful army bound for Troy. But when even Achilles was helpless against the army’s raging masses, she gave in. She resolved to die nobly for Greece, since all Hellas looked to her for the sailing of the fleet. Why should Achilles die for her, she asked, when “One man is of more value than a host of women.”2 And who was she, a mortal, to oppose the divine Artemis? But the Greek Chorus, speaking for the truth, replied, “Your nature, princess, is indeed noble and true; But events fester, and divinity is sick.”3 Nevertheless, Iphigenia went nobly to her death, absolving her father and telling her mother not to be angry and not to hate him.4
What view of the feminine is implied in this drama? Woman is regarded as man’s possession! The three prominent female characters are regarded as objects owned by man. Because Menelaus regards Helen as his possession, the loss of the beautiful Helen initiates the Greeks to war on the Trojans to retrieve her. Clytemnestra, the obedient wife, is regarded by Agamemnon as his to rule. And Iphigenia is a daughter who can be sacrificed by her father. Hence, the feminine is not allowed to reveal itself from its own center, but is reduced to those forms compatible with the prevailing masculine view.
At the same time, the prevailing masculine goal is power; man’s first duty is to Greece, no matter what the cost. Helen’s seduction by Paris is really an opportunity for the Greeks to make war on the Trojans. As Agamemnon later realizes when it is too late, “A strange lust rages with demonic power throughout the Hellene army…”5 And it is this power lust which ultimately demands Iphigenia’s sacrifice.
This drama also shows a split within the feminine. One role is allotted to Helen who personifies beauty. Another is given to Clytemnestra, the obedient and dutiful wife and mother. These two forms of the feminine are the only roles for women that this play presents. The feminine realm is devalued by being reduced to the service of men either through beauty or obedience. The ideal of beauty reduces the woman’s worth to a mere projection of men’s desire and puts her in the puella position of girl-like dependence. And dutiful obedience reduces her to the status of servant to a male master. In each case she exists not in and of herself, but has her identity only in relation to man’s needs. The father, King Agamemnon, supports this devaluation of the feminine when ultimately he agrees to sacrifice his daughter so that the Greeks can bring back Helen. And he expects his wife, Clytemnestra, to be ruled by his decree. His own ambition and need for power is primary, and the welfare of his daughter is only secondary.
Just as the two sisters, Helen and Clytemnestra, personify the split feminine ideals of beauty and obedience, so the two brothers, Menelaus and Agamemnon, are ruled in soul by these two opposites. Menelaus, the boyish brother, is so captivated by Helen’s beauty that he is willing to sacrifice all else—a whole army of men and even his niece’s life. In contrast, Agamemnon has sold his soul to serve Greece’s lust for power and for his own ambition to be king even though this position isolates him and cuts him off from expressing his human fatherly feelings. Perhaps the worst wound Agamemnon suffers is to be cut off from his tears. As he confesses:
What a man-trap of compulsive Fate I have fallen into! Some divine power, cleverer than all my cleverness has tricked and defeated me. To be low-born, I see, has its advantages: A man can weep, and tell his sorrows to the world. A king endures sorrows no less; but the demand for dignity governs our life, and we are
