The Theme of Oedipus

Although O'Neill supposedly derived Mourning Becomes Electra from the Oresteia, the myth that actually structures the play's action is overwhelming that of Oedipus.Oedipus was the Theban king who unwittingly killed his father and murdered his mother, bringing ruin to the land. Famously Freud elaborated this myth into his Oedipus complex, the structure through which children are conventionally introduced into the social order and normative sexual relations. In contrast, the girl abandons the mother upon realizing both the mother's castration and her own. To her dismay, neither she nor her mother have a penis. She then turns to the father in hopes of bearing a child by him that would substitute for her missing penis; the girl would become a mother in her mother's place. Thus, whereas castration ends the Oedipus complex for the boy, it begins it for the girl. The Oedipal drama in its many permutations determines the course of the trilogy. Lavinia, for example, yearns to replace Christine as wife to her father and mother to her brother. Christine clings to Orin as that the "flesh and blood," entirely her own, that would make good on her castration. Brant, in turn, is but a substitute for her precious son. Orin yearns to re- establish his incestuous bond with his mother. But the war, where he would finally assume the Mannon name, forces him from their pre-Oedipal embrace in the first place. (Source)