The subject, as he has chosen to treat it, is the heroic endurance of
a woman who devotes her life to the vindication of intolerable wrongs
done to her father, and the restoration of her young brother to his
hereditary rights. Hers is the human agency which for this purpose
works together with Apollo. But the divine intention is concealed from
her. She suffers countless indignities from her father's enemies, of
whom her own mother is the chief. And, at length, all her hopes are
shattered by the false tidings that Orestes is no more. Even then she
does not relinquish her resolve. And the revulsion from her deep
sorrow to extremity of joy, when she finds Orestes at her side and
ready to perform the act of vengeance in his own person, is
irresistably affecting, even when the play is only read.

Sophocles is especially great in the delineation of ideal female
characters. The heroic ardour of Antigone, and the no less heroic
persistence and endurance of Electra, are both founded on the strength
of their affection. And the affection in both cases is what some
moderns too have called the purest of human feelings, the love of a
sister for a brother. Another aspect of that world-old marvel, 'the
love of women,' was presented in Aias' captive bride, Tecmessa. This
softer type also attains to heroic grandeur in Dêanira, the wronged
wife of Heracles, whose fatal error is caused by the innocent working
of her wounded love.

It is strange that so acute a critic as A.W. Schlegel should have
doubted the Sophoclean authorship of the Trachiniae. If its religious
and moral lessons are even less obtrusive than those of either Oedipus
and of the Antigone, there is no play which more directly pierces to
the very heart of humanity. And it is a superficial judgement which
complains that here at all events our sympathies are distracted