Eco-Refiguration, Vengeance and Feminine Sovereignty: Victoria Grossack and Alice Underwood’s 'Clytemnestra: The Mother’s Blade'

Abstract

This chapter contributes to classical reception in contemporary women’s writing by examining the revisionist approach of Victoria Grossack and Alice Underwood towards the classical hypotexts that shape the myth of Clytemnestra in 'The Mother’s Blade' (2017). The authors refigure Clytemnestra’s vengeance as an ecofeminist imperative, setting her actions within a tripartite framework of archetypal womanhood—maiden, mother and queen, each element being associated with a distinct aspect of the Great Goddess (Potnia) of the Late Bronze Age Aegean. In this context, Agamemnon’s death is reimagined as a multifaceted act of justice addressing ecological harm, maternal grief and the erosion of feminine sovereignty. To analyse this process, I introduce the term eco-refiguration, which I coin here to designate a critical framework that captures the authors’ revisionist mode—one that sustains a reconciliatory engagement with the classical sources while also reconfiguring them through interwoven systems of care, resistance and ecological justice.