Historically, Western literature has featured men, particularly sons, as heroic avengers of wrongful death, dishonour, and moral or bodily injury. When women take revenge, they often appear far from heroic, at least according to patriarchal norms of heroism. In literary representations, avenging women are portrayed as deviants, for they have deviated from the social roles assigned them, roles that carry assumptions about women's morality and nature in patriarchal societies. For a woman to take revenge, she must transgress against all codes of behaviour that govern her domestic roles. Notorious examples from classical antiquity of the terrifying transformations of mothers and wives into savage revengers include Hecuba, Medea and Clytemnestra. In this family of female avengers, however, there is one member who rarely makes an appearance, and that is the daughter. What might explain the absence, or near absence, of avenging daughters? Was the gender exclusivity of the son's role as avenger so ingrained in the social imaginary of older cultures that it was virtually impossible for poets and dramatists to envision the daughter as an agent of vengeance?

In the literature of classical Greece, we find only one representation of a daughter who is prepared to take the part of her father's avenger: Electra. The three extant dramatic depictions of Electra reflect a development over time in the characterisation of her agency as an avenger. In the earliest drama, Aeschylus’ The Libation Bearers, Electra is represented as a lamenting daughter who subordinates her will to Orestes, the avenging son. Their social and legal functions are clearly demarcated in the play: Electra laments and incites, Orestes avenges. In Sophocles’ play, Electra rises above socially prescribed roles and asserts that she alone will avenge her father's death. She is prepared to kill Aegisthus, her father's murderer, and is only prevented from doing so by the arrival of Orestes, who takes the mantle of revenge from his sister. In Euripides’ play, the last of the three Electra plays, the brother and sister unite in revenge and together they slay their mother, Clytemnestra, for her murder of their father, Agamemnon. Euripides characterises Electra as fierce, determined, resentful and inclined towards violence.