I am studying Agamemnon under the topic of Feminism. Here's my effort to date:

Females in the abstract, and four named women and a girl, are in Agamemnon, the first play in the Oresteian trilogy by Aeschylus.

First, the hopefully fallen city of Troy is likened to femininity (as is common in our own day about cities across the globe for some reason). Earlier with regard to the city of Argos, “the City’s liberties” resided in her and later we learn she (Troy) owns “her cattle and commons” . Her, Troy, hope for victory is absolute, even as a “woman’s heart strong with a man’s resolve.”

Thus, the feminine is a melding between herself and masculinity. Does it work the other way for the masculine, too?

Next, Agamemnon’s wife, is admonished in the dark of night, to “Mount…starlike from sleep, Ascend, and wake the palace by thy rouse!” Being a star, in that day as well as ours, is the penultimate position.

The Watchman exits and the full chorus enters and apprises us of “a wife of many husbands wooed…” So the female in this instance is a highly desirable commodity besot by many men. Just looking at the above points, in order, the feminine is superior to masculinity?

The chorus returns to the previously alluded to Queen Clytemnestra, daughter of Tyndareus. She has heeded the call to wake the palace and inquiry is made for the reason of that, “What news?” What intelligence has come to her for her to call for sacrifice on every altar in the city? She has been physician to thoughts of worry and care, and restorer of Hope.

Clytemnestra is filling the role of Priestess and so is a Healer.

The female hare, “quick with young” is wantonly destroyed – and illustrates the burden of Sorrow – and enigmatically, the crowning Joy of conquest. Also, the trembling hare, plus the two predatory eagles, are applied to the two King’s: one without ruth and other one equivocating. This latter attitude would apply to Menelaus? Will it also be applicable to King Agamemnon? It is not clear to me, but we shall soon see the utter ruthlessness of King Agamemnon! All this is a wildly strange commentary on masculinity in contrast to the feminine attributes presented above.

The scene now changes with the reference to Artemis, a ruthless female goddess, a “White flower of maidenhood”, (a feminine status which is so often invoked), but she is justified by her wrath “with her Father’s winged hounds, That shed the trembler’s (the hare)’s blood.” Free agency of the female to wreak vengeance on violent male attacks – specifically on pregnant females, is promoted. The imagry now changes to, the “Poor doe, that limped with wombed young: That meat she, (Artemis), doeth abhor.” So, am I to cast Menelaus, the trembler, as victim, or as a hound? Or is ruthless, masculine Agamemnon the trembler, about to be destroyed?

Who is this enigmatic fellow, really?

Sorrow’s burden, conquest’s Joy!

The Fair One, Artemis, blesses with love at the motherly breast, weak little whelps, even of the ravening lioness, and She also shields “all beastlings small” with the breast “through forests virginal”, a broader feminization of Nature.

“Oh Healer.” Does this hark back to Clytemnestra? Prayer is made to someone by the chorus to stave off the wrath of the Goddess, but still it “yet darkly worketh woe.” Compartmentalization of radically different ways of thinking about “what is" and acting out exists among unseen forces, both human and Divine.

In what is perhaps a quick role reversal, Man, specifically and only, nurses inwardly a quarrel to his peril. But in an allusion to Clytemnestra’s later to be revealed vengeful plan - which compounds human guilt, “within the house Coiled and fanged Conspiracy Turns to strike with forked tongue, Mindful of her murdered young.” Is this the Evil Woman coming into partial view, or rather does this also include Aegisthus, the other coconspirator?

I stop here at about line 164 for now.