Writing patriarchy out of tragedy? Marina Carr’s translocation of the atrides myth in Ariel

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This paper examines Marina Carr’s Ariel as a feminist retelling of the Greek myth of the Atrides. It compares that contemporaneous play with the classical tragedies displaying that mythological story that Carr has used to craft the plot of Ariel, namely Aeschylus’s The Oresteia, Sophocles’s Electra and Euripides’s Iphigenia at Aulis. This comparison underlines the subversion of Greek tragedy’s political purpose in Ariel. Indeed, Carr shows the destructive power of patriarchy instead of endorsing it as a socio-political structure like Greek tragedy used to do during the 5th century B.C.E. The portrayal of women on stage is crucial regarding that matter. In Ariel, Carr approaches female characters as subjects oppressed by the patriarchal ideology fuelling the Republic of Ireland, diverting thus from the tradition of the “male gaze” displayed in Greek tragedy.