Fate Versus Free Will in Clytemnestra

Thematic Claim

In Clytemnestra, Costanza Casati subverts the classical notion that mortals are helpless before prophecy. The novel’s central claim is that free will can override divine decree when a person acts from clear values—loyalty, justice, and vengeance. While characters like Calchas and Menelaus treat the gods’ will as unchangeable, Clytemnestra repeatedly chooses her own path, shaping her destiny through deliberate, brutal acts. The theme emerges not as a simple victory of choice over fate, but as a war fought within a web of consequence: every choice breeds new constraints, and freedom is earned through blood.

Tracing the Theme Across the Plot

1. Early Defiance in Sparta (Childhood and Youth)

Clytemnestra’s first major assertion of free will occurs when she breaks Spartan custom to protect her sister Helen. In the wrestling match against Cynisca, she intervenes despite knowing the rule that “when two girls are wrestling, one wins and the other loses” (Ch. 3). Her mother Leda warns that only gods can intervene, but Clytemnestra chooses to act, throwing Cynisca and carrying Helen away. This moment establishes her core principle: she will not let fate—embodied here by the brutal Spartan code—determine her sister’s suffering. Castor later remarks that she “always cared more about others than about [her]self,” a trait that drives her subsequent rebellions.

2. The Decision to Avenge Iphigenia (The Queen’s Justice)

The sacrifice of Iphigenia, ordered by Calchas as a divine requirement for fair winds to Troy, is the novel’s climax of fate versus free will. Calchas claims “I do what the gods order me to do” and warns Clytemnestra that challenging their will is unwise. Yet she refuses to accept that her daughter’s death was an inescapable decree. In the temple, she kills Calchas herself, sticking a dagger into his eye and cutting his throat. She later tells Aegisthus that his killing of Cassandra was unnecessary—“She did nothing to you! Why did you have to sacrifice her?”—revealing that even in her vengeance she retains the power to choose whom to spare. The act of killing Calchas is a direct rejection of passive submission to prophecy: “You ordered an innocent girl to be butchered like a goat… It was you who ordered the sacrifice,” she says, placing responsibility on human agents, not the gods.

3. The Aftermath and the Choice to Protect Orestes (Friends and Foes)

After Agamemnon’s murder, Clytemnestra confronts the curse of the House of Atreus—the expectation that a son must avenge his father. Aegisthus warns that Orestes will eventually turn against her. Rather than accept this as fated, she negotiates with it: she sends Orestes to Sparta to build alliances while she consolidates power. “He will show me his loyalty,” she says, betting that her influence and teaching can outweigh the so-called law of patrilineal vengeance. This decision demonstrates that she believes nurture and choice can alter what seems predetermined. Yet the novel does not let her escape entirely—the final image of Orestes’s smile hints at unresolved tension, acknowledging that free will operates within limits.

Character and Symbol Connections

Characters

Symbols

• The Ceadas (ravine): Where Spartans discard criminals and weak infants. Clytemnestra looks into it as a child and later remembers hiding there. It symbolizes the space where fate (natural selection) is supposed to operate, but she survives it through will.
• The Nightingale: Often associated with lament and transformation. In the novel, Clytemnestra’s grief for her daughter becomes a force that drives her choices, not a passive suffering.
• The Lion Gate: The entrance to Mycenae’s citadel, representing power and the threshold between public and private will. Clytemnestra passes through it when she sends Orestes away, consciously shaping her legacy.
• The Anemone: A flower that blooms briefly, often linked to death and remembrance. It mirrors the ephemeral nature of mortal choices set against the eternal backdrop of myth.

Complexity and Contradiction

Casati does not present free will as an unalloyed triumph. Clytemnestra’s choices are constrained by the violent world she inhabits. She cannot save Cassandra from Aegisthus; she cannot undo the chain of vengeance that leads Orestes toward her. In Chapter 17, she reflects on an oath she made to Leda, calling herself a “murderer and an oath breaker”—a moment of doubt about whether her will is truly her own. The Furies, goddesses of vengeance, haunt her imagination, yet they never come for her, suggesting that moral causality is more complex than divine punishment.

Moreover, the novel questions whether free will can coexist with love. Clytemnestra’s loyalty to her children forces her into almost predetermined patterns: killing Agamemnon, sending Orestes away, protecting Electra. She must constantly “wade through blood,” as Calchas predicts, to remain true to herself. The author’s afterword (Chapter 39) confirms that Casati sees Clytemnestra as guided by “clear values of loyalty, courage, and vengeance”—but these values themselves create a trap. The theme’s deepest insight is that freedom is not the absence of constraint but the active choice of one’s burdens.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does Clytemnestra’s intervention in Helen’s wrestling match set the stage for her later defiance of fate?

   • She breaks the Spartan rule that only the two fighters should decide the outcome, acting on her own judgment. This early choice reveals her willingness to override social law (which substitutes for divine order) when it conflicts with her loyalty to family. Later, she will similarly override prophecy and curse to protect and avenge those she loves.

2. In the confrontation with Calchas, what does Clytemnestra’s dialogue reveal about her view of fate?

   • She mocks his claim to divine sanction, asking “Did some sheep’s intestines tell you so?” and later states, “You order an innocent girl to be butchered like a goat.” She strips prophecy of its sacredness, framing it as a human decision—one for which Calchas is responsible. Killing him is her ultimate rejection of fatalism.

3. Why does Clytemnestra spare Cassandra, and why is that choice important to the theme?

   • She sees Cassandra as another victim of male violence, like her daughter. By promising “No one will hurt you, I promise,” she asserts her power to break the cycle of sacrifice. The fact that Aegisthus later kills Cassandra (despite Clytemnestra’s will) demonstrates that free will is fragile; others’ choices can thwart our own.

4. How does sending Orestes to Sparta represent a negotiation with fate?

   • The law of the House of Atreus demands that a son avenge his father. Rather than accept this as inevitable, Clytemnestra removes Orestes from Mycenae to prevent a confrontation. She educates him in her values, hoping to overwrite the curse with loyalty. This is a deliberate act of management, not a resignation to destiny.

5. What does the symbol of the Ceadas contribute to the theme of fate versus free will?

   • The Ceadas is where unwanted infants are thrown. It represents a world that tries to eliminate the weak, as if fate’s judgment were final. Clytemnestra’s childhood memory of hiding there—and her survival—suggests that she has already escaped one form of predetermined doom. It becomes a backdrop for her belief that she can shape her own story, even among the discards of Sparta.