Without a Blemish: Helen of Troy

Amy Carney

Jacksonville University

The Most Notorious Woman in Western Literature

Forever remembered as the ravishing beauty whose face launched a thousand warships, Helen of Troy remains one of the most recognizable names in literature and mythology. According to Homer and other classical authors, Helen’s irresponsible actions ignite the Trojan War. These poor decisions allow readers to misplace guilt for the entire war on the shoulders of one woman. Yet many others, including the Trojan elders in the Iliad, exonerate Helen of guilt because of her beauty and crystallize the erroneous belief that physical beauty equals inner goodness. This binary insistence on Helen’s immortal looks has marginalized her as an individual. As long as others treat her as an object and not as a person, Helen cannot accept responsibility for the poor decisions she makes. This impasse calls for an examination of the politics of power and an inquiry into why Helen of Troy is held unaccountable for the reckless choices she makes in following her passions.

“The story of Helen is the story of a woman, loved and hated beyond human recognition.”[1] It provides the background necessary to understand why people blame or exonerate her for the Trojan War. Her infamy originated when her mother Leda conceived Helen and her brother Pollux after an unusual sexual encounter with Zeus. As a young girl, Helen was abducted by Theseus, the King of Athens, and his friend, Peirithous, the King of Lapithae.[2] She returned home after her brothers Pollux and Castor rescued her. Suitors from all over the Greek world visited Sparta “to pay court to the Wonder Girl.”[3] Her father, Tyndareus, found it impossible to select Helen’s husband for fear that his choice would result in retribution against himself, his daughter, and her husband by a scorned suitor. The clever Odysseus, famed hero of Homer’s Odyssey, devised a solution. All of the suitors would bind themselves to Tyndareus’ choice. If someone should violate Helen’s marriage, then the remaining suitors were obligated to punish the rogue. The suitors agreed, and Tyndareus selected Menelaus to wed Helen. They married and produced one child, a daughter named Hermione.

The arrival of a foreign prince, however, shattered Menelaus and Helen’s life. For proclaiming her the most fair goddess, Aphrodite rewarded Paris, son of the Trojan king Priam, with Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. He then set sail for Sparta. Menelaus welcomed Paris to his home under the conventions of xenia, “guest friendship.”[4] During this visit, Menelaus was called away to a funeral in Crete. Helen abandoned her lawful husband and nine-year-old daughter when she gathered up the palace treasure and eloped with Paris.[5] This flight bears a striking resemblance to Helen’s kidnapping by Theseus because both of these events connect Helen and her abductors with the theme of an “earth-bride who is carried off and mated by a chthonic deity” as personified in the rape of Persephone by Hades.[6]

Helen’s former suitors banded together after learning about the betrayal of Menelaus’ hospitality. They sent a delegation to Troy demanding the return of both Helen and the money, but the Trojans refused. Rebuffed, the Greeks, known as the Argives or Achaians, prepared for war. With the eventual arrival of the Argive forces and the subsequent landing of the Trojan allies, the Trojan War broke out and raged for ten years. From the walls of Troy, Helen watched the men fight and mourned as heroes on both sides perished, Paris among them. Helen immediately married his younger brother Deiphobus.[7]

By pretending to give up the war and having their forces sail away, the Argives ultimately gained admittance to Troy hidden in the Trojan horse. Once the celebrating Trojans had sufficiently inebriated themselves, the Argives broke out of the horse, opened the gates of the famed city, let their own soldiers inside, and slaughtered the Trojans. Menelaus found Helen in her bedroom with Deiphobus. Enraged, he slaughtered Deiphobus and was about to execute Helen when she bared her breasts and pleaded for her life. Menelaus hesitated and declared that he would kill her later.[8] By the time Odysseus’ son Telemachus visits Sparta ten years later in the Odyssey, Menelaus has forgotten about this declaration and lives with Helen once again.

Helen’s personal history provides details as to why many people view the Trojan War as simply a contest for possession of her.[9] Branded as the most notorious woman in Western culture, Helen is the original femme fatale.[10] Her provocative beauty becomes the commonly accepted cause of the war.[11] The root of her name, hele, means destroy. Within a few months after the initiation of the war, many men curse Helen as the source of war and destruction; she embodies the fatality pursuing Troy.[12] By the time of the Iliad, twenty years have passed since she fled Sparta with Paris, and she still remains the motive for the war and is “the reward the winner will carry off.”[13] She watches from the walls of Troy as the men fight “first and forever, for Helen.”[14]

These soldiers fight on a daily basis for the sake of Helen, a woman the common soldier does not even know. The nameless, faceless masses eventually scorn Helen for their losses. People more intimate with Helen join them in censuring her, as shown in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis, Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, and Homer’s Odyssey.

Euripides’ play relates the story of how Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus and supreme commander of the Argive forces, must sacrifice his young daughter Iphigenia to appease Artemis and to allow the Argives to continue their voyage to Troy. When Clytaemnestra learns about the intended sacrifice of her daughter, she demands her husband explain why their daughter must die. When he does not respond, Clytaemnestra answers with a bitter slander toward her sister: “‘It is that Menelaus may recover Helen.’ An honourable exchange, indeed, to pay a wicked woman’s price in children’s lives! ‘Tis buying what we most detest with what we hold most dear.”[15] Before submitting to her lethal fate, Iphigenia chastises her aunt for “causing wars and bloodshed by her beauty.”[16] Even the Greek chorus, which represents the common people, degrades Helen and blames her for the tragedy at Aulis.

Similarly, Clytaemnestra and the chorus both rave against Helen in Aeschylus’ tragedy Agamemnon. Clytaemnestra again slanders her sister as “the scourge of men, the one alone / who destroyed a myriad of Greek lives.”[17] The chorus declares that Helen went to Troy with a simple dowry: death. She symbolizes war and drives men to their deaths; she is “hell at the prows, hell at the gates / hell on the men-of-war.”[18]

Finally, Odysseus discloses his feelings about the wicked actions of Helen in Homer’s Odyssey. While speaking with Agamemnon in the Underworld, Odysseus claims that “Myriads / died by Helen’s fault.”[19] When one of the most cunning and revered heroes in Western literature assails Helen for her actions, the path for blaming Helen has clearly been paved for lesser people to follow with their own disapprobation. Helen became an object of blame. For many people, she caused the Trojan War. Bashing Helen became an accepted poetic pastime.[20] Helen is the prototype for blaming women for dire situations. Other similar victims include Eve, Dido, and Guinevere.

Eve falls susceptible to the serpent and takes an apple from the forbidden tree of knowledge in books two and three of Genesis. After sampling the fruit, she hands it to her husband. Her actions spoil the tranquil life in the Garden and force God to banish the husband and wife as punishment. It does not matter that anyone—even Adam—could have fallen susceptible to the serpent or that Eve does not force Adam to eat from the fruit. Eve is blamed for all of the woes of mankind for making one mistake. By extension then, women can be held responsible for the ills of the world because of Eve’s weakness, thus placing an eternal and terrible burden on the women of the world.

In Virgil’s Aeneid, Dido pledges her love and her city to the famed Trojan hero Aeneas. She does not understand Aeneas’ devotion to his mission to found Rome, and she cannot accept his reasons for abandoning her. This misunderstanding leads to an eternal and bitter hatred not between the lovers, but between their nations. After Aeneas and his men leave Carthage, Dido implores the gods that “no love, / No pact must be between” the Romans and Carthaginians.[21] She wants the two cities to live forever in conflict. “May they contend in war, / Themselves and all the children of their children!”[22] These curses come true many generations later. Between the years of 264–146 BCE, Rome and Carthage fought three wars known as the Punic Wars. The wars ended once the Romans wiped out the Carthaginians and razed the city of Carthage to the ground. Over one hundred years of death and destruction were explained away as the curses of one forlorn woman.

In the tales of Camelot, Guinevere is classified as the beautiful but unfaithful wife of King Arthur. Her similarities to Helen do not end with her beauty and infidelity. Guinevere is abducted from her husband twice—once by Melwas, the king of Aestiva Regio, and the second time by Mordred, Arthur’s nephew. Sir Lancelot rescues her from Melwas, and from this liberation, their infamous love affair began. This scandalous liaison, along with the death of Arthur during her second abduction, leads to the fall of the illustrious Round Table.[23] Once again, behind all of the destruction lie the reckless actions of one woman; Guinevere, like Helen, becomes a scapegoat for ruin.

Disarmingly beautiful, Helen’s physical appearance drives men to war. On the other hand, her story also shows that her persuasive beauty disarms men. For as many detractors as Helen has, she always has supporters who attempt to exonerate her of guilt for the Trojan War. Neither her Spartan nor Trojan husband faults Helen. Menelaus values her no more than the treasure that had been stolen with her.[24] She is simply an eminent possession that he must recover. Paris has no greater respect for Helen than Menelaus does. As stubbornly as Menelaus fights to get Helen back, Paris refuses just as vigorously to give her up.[25] In essence, one man desires her simply because another man does as well, but at the same time neither holds her responsible for this conflict.[26]

The distinguished Trojan king Priam bears Helen no ill will. As one of her most ardent supporters, he absolves her of guilt by placing it on the gods. Following Helen’s first appearance in the Iliad, Priam gently tells her that the gods contrived the war against the Argives. Once he declares this sentiment, he drops the matter and asks Helen to name the notable Argive warriors fighting below.[27]

Helen’s other resolute supporter is her Trojan brother-in-law Hector. He staunchly protects Helen from both the physical onslaught of the Argives and the verbal abuse heaped on her from inside the city walls. Like his father, Hector treats Helen tenderly and defends her from the hatred she inspires.[28] She has brought war to his home, but he harbors no ill will and constantly remains courteous.[29] If anyone, Hector blames Paris for the hostilities; upon finding Paris at his house with Helen, Hector declares, “It is for you that this war with its clamour / has flared up about our city.”[30] Helen returns Hector’s kind treatment with a tearful lament over his grave.[31]

Finally, there are the Trojan elders. Too old to fight, they still voice their mixed opinions. They wish Helen would leave and not bring further grief to them and their children. Nevertheless, they conversely state that “surely there is no blame on Trojans and strong-greaved Achaians / if for long time they suffer hardship for a women like this one. / Terrible is the likeness of her face to immortal goddesses.”[32] Her indescribable beauty moves these men to forget the resentment provoked by the battle below. No other woman in literature, save perhaps the New Testament’s Virgin Mary, has such majestic command over the hearts and souls of men.

Helen’s True Culpability

These diametric views paint Helen in two very different lights. She is found either totally responsible or totally innocent of blame. In reality, there is no clear dividing line when it comes to guilt. Helen is not the sole scourge of men, as Clytaemnestra asserts. Nor is she an innocent victim of the whims of the gods, as Priam claims. The truth lies in the middle of full liability and absolute vindication. No one can deny Helen’s significance in the Trojan War, but she is not the sole originator of the war nor the only motivating force that spurs the war on for ten years.

The Argive chieftains were bound by their oath to Tyndareus to rescue Helen and to salvage Menelaus’ pride. Each prince rounded up soldiers quite willing to battle the Trojans because new markets, raw materials, rich lands, and treasures were also in store for the victorious army.[33] Helen just provides the perfect justification for the violence. She is as good a cause as any to initiate the war.

But after ten years, the war has still not been won, and the end is nowhere in sight. Despair begins to loom over the Argive soldiers. In their estimation, too many lives have been lost in the name of saving fair Helen. This original goal cannot sustain the bloodshed. The men have lost the burning passion they once held and do not want to fight. Agamemnon tests the troops’ resolve in book two of the Iliad. He tells his men that even though the Argives outnumber the Trojans, they cannot win the war. He suggests that they return home.[34]

Agamemnon’s words have the opposite effect than he intends. Instead of renewing their vigor for the war, the men trample over one another as they race for the boats. They would have succeeded had Athena not inspired Odysseus to interpose himself among them. Odysseus and the wise king Nestor persuade the men to remain until the city of Troy falls. The authoritative words renew the vigor of the men, and they head back toward Troy. They do not march this time with thoughts of beautiful Helen in the back of their mind, but of remaining to sustain their honor, to pay homage to their dead comrades, and to decimate Troy.[35]

An integral plot in the Iliad supports the idea that the fighting is founded on more than Helen. Achilles never fought for the sake of Helen. Too young to have been one of her suitors, he is not bound by the oath. The Argives sought him out because it had been foretold that Troy would not fall without his assistance. After a dispute with Agamemnon over the possession of a slave woman, Achilles withdraws from the front. When the tides turn against the Argives, Achilles’ beloved friend Patroklos implores him to be allowed to wear his armor on the battlefield to deceive the Trojans. Achilles consents, and in the course of the fighting, Hector slays Patroklos. Enraged by the loss of his friend, Achilles vows vengeance and returns to the battle to avenge his friend.

Although once brought to the battlefield by Helen, the soldiers find a greater reason to fight after ten bloody, brutal years. The Argives redefine the war in their own terms to make the loss of life justifiable in their minds, a phenomenon that would pervade warfare as the centuries passed. While this reshaping of the context of the war relieves Helen of complete blame, she still makes poor decisions that adversely affect others. It is these errors in judgment and not an entire war for which she must be held accountable. Her culpability falls into three offenses: following her passions, endangering the lives of the others, and jeopardizing her family.

“The songs of Homer and later ancient poets are not about historical events, but about difficult choices and tragic consequences that face all human beings as they attempt to answer the demands of society and their own desires.”[36] The constraining demands placed on Helen revolve around her sex and her beauty. As an ancient Greek woman, she is locked into the values of modesty, obedience, restraint, and submission. Her marriage is based on political expedience, not love, and her primary purpose is to provide her husband with a proper family.[37] Her iconic beauty captures any man who beholds her. It creates an entrapping power that ensnares even Helen herself; she cannot escape the image fashioned by her immortal looks.

To Helen, the arrival of Paris and the subsequent departure of Menelaus provide her with an opportunity to escape the life into which she has been trapped. Like Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Helen thought that fleeing from home would abolish her confined past life and usher her into a new life filled with love.[38] Helen finds this promise of a free life quickly shattered. She cannot escape her past. By attempting to flee, her famed beauty delivers death to the gates of Troy. She becomes a catalyst for war by following her heart and not her head.

Helen’s passion leads her down the road of adultery not once, but twice. After Paris dies, Helen compounds the mistake of her first affair by engaging in a second one with Deiphobus. She receives no reproach for either affair, and this lack of criticism creates an exception to the rule of castigating women who engage in extramarital affairs. Clytaemnestra certainly never finds approval for her affair with Aegisthus. Although readers now view the love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere as a model of courtly love, Guinevere unquestionably receives blame for betraying her worthy husband. In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the title character condemns his mother Gertrude for her hasty marriage to Claudius and suspects that their relationship originated before the death of his father. Edna Pontellier, the main character of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, breaks all traditional conventions when she falls in love with another man, engages in an affair with a third man, and then commits suicide, all prohibited behavior for a woman in the late Victorian era. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter illustrates the pinnacle of guilty passion. Not only does Hester Prynne have an affair with Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale that she does not regret, but she also has a daughter from this liaison. Among these six women, Hester suffers the most injurious scorn for committing a passionate crime no different from some committed by the “faultless” Helen.

Helen’s first reckless decision, following her passions, directly ties in with her second mistake, endangering the lives of others. Whereas the entire catastrophic death toll cannot be blamed exclusively on Helen, she must share responsibility for the loss of life. Her former suitors, having lost Helen to Menelaus, settle into other marriages and raise their own families. Not one of them thinks about Helen anymore, unless it is to compare her with his own wife. Now these same men have to inform their wives that they must risk their lives for the sake of another woman.[39] The absence of a husband is grievous enough, but a permanent loss imposes suffering for both a wife and her children.

No wife suffers greater than does Penelope. Odysseus does not die, but his absence for twenty years creates ample opportunity for trouble to brew in Ithaca for Penelope and their son Telemachus. Suitors besiege her and demand she choose a new husband. These men disrespect her home, defile her slaves, and attempt to kill her son. Instead of protecting his family and estate, Odysseus spends twenty years of his life—ten at war and ten at sea—away from home because of Helen. Indirectly, she is responsible for the suffering of many such wives and children as Penelope and Telemachus.

A specific example of the jeopardy Helen directly places the soldiers in comes at the end of the war. Although Helen knew that the Argive soldiers were tucked away in the hollow belly of the Trojan horse, she did not warn the Trojans, a decision that would have allowed the Trojans to kill the Argive leaders and would have left the Argive fleet hidden at sea without any guidance. In lieu of directly selling the Argives out, Helen simply walks around the horse, and, assuming the identities of the men inside, imitates the voices of their wives. If any of the Trojans had realized what she was doing or if any of the men inside of the horse had responded, the lives of the latter soldiers would have been forfeit. This act on the part of Helen represents one of her greatest betrayals.

This dastardly exploit undertaken by Helen pales in comparison with her final error in judgment—jeopardizing her family. When Helen abandons her home, the ensuing actions negatively impact her forsaken daughter Hermione. Helen’s flight and Menelaus’ subsequent pursuit leaves the couple’s daughter in the shrewd hands of Clytaemnestra. The house of Atreus in Argos under the care of her treacherous aunt is certainly not a safe place for the young girl. Furthermore, Menelaus promises the hand of his daughter to Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, in exchange for his help at the end of the war. This arrangement causes a problem when Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra, murders Neoptolemus after the war because Orestes feels that he himself should marry Hermione. Hence, another death is indirectly caused by Helen’s poor decisions.

Hermione is not the only child wronged by Helen. As mentioned earlier, Iphigenia suffers a cruel fate when her father lures her to Aulis. Helen’s departure results in the sacrifice of her innocent niece. The story, however, takes a brutal turn for the worse. Later poets, including Euphorion of Chalkis, Alexandros of Pleuron, and Stesichorous of Himera, assert that Iphigenia is the daughter of Helen.[40] They believe that Helen became pregnant with Iphigenia by Theseus during her abduction. Clytaemnestra, already married, adopted the child so as not to compromise Helen.[41] It is tragic enough that Helen’s poor decisions endanger the safety of one daughter. To think that her improvident actions result in the death of another daughter generates a heavy burden that Helen must bear. She cannot receive exoneration for the crime of endangering her own children.

The Politics of Power: Helen’s Loss of Agency

Although Helen clearly needs to claim responsibility for her reckless decisions, because of her beauty, she habitually escapes scathing criticism. Therefore, if she should answer for her faulty judgment, then why is Helen generally held unaccountable? Why does no one see past this physical facade of “the face that launched a thousand ships”? Five explanations clarify these questions: the scapegoat archetype, lack of power, negation of guilt, lack of dissenting female voices, and the power of stereotypes.

Archetypes are universal symbols. Red roses represent love, the Ying-Yang stands for harmony, and Helen of Troy exemplifies female beauty. One of the more powerful archetypes in literature is the scapegoat archetype. This motif revolves around the belief that “by transferring the corruptions of the tribe to a sacred animal or person, [and] then by killing (and in some instances eating) this scapegoat, the tribe could achieve the cleansing and atonement thought necessary for natural and spiritual rebirth.”[42] While Helen is certainly not physically killed or eaten, she has no life of her own. She is not an individual, but a valued object for which men will fight. She erroneously represents the sole reason for the war. By using Helen as a scapegoat, the Argive and Trojan warriors can easily pass the blame on to Helen and thus escape responsibility for their own actions and objectives in pursuing the war.

Interestingly, Helen accepts this role of scapegoat. She blames herself and openly refers to herself as a slut. While speaking with Priam in book three of the Iliad, Helen retrospectively desires that she had wished for death instead of following Paris to Troy.[43] When speaking with Hector in book six, she refers to herself as “a nasty bitch”; she again wishes for death, lamenting that she had not died at the moment of her birth.[44]Full of self-reproach, Helen never forgives herself; she remains ashamed of her actions.[45]

The soldiers, however, are not the only ones who use Helen as a scapegoat. Aphrodite unquestionably exploits Helen and uses her as a pawn. Aphrodite rewards Paris with Helen knowing full well of Helen’s marriage and the oath sworn by her former suitors. Helen understands the power the goddess holds over her and even tries to escape this authority. After Aphrodite rescues Paris from his duel with Menelaus, she commands Helen to visit Paris. Helen responds by upbraiding Aphrodite, telling the latter to spend eternity caring for Paris until he marries or enslaves her. As this response does not settle well with Aphrodite, she irately warns Helen not to cross her or she will cause Helen to be reviled by everyone. Fearful of Aphrodite’s wrath, Helen submissively obeys the goddess’ orders.[46]

Therefore, Helen remains transfixed in the guilt with which she has surrounded herself. Regardless of whether other people trap her into this state of guilt or if she is nothing more than a plaything of the gods, she cannot escape the role of the scapegoat. As nothing more than a pawn, she loses her individuality and the ability to take responsibility. Freedom does not exist for her; she has nothing to hope for short of death. “She is a prisoner of the passions her beauty excited.”[47]

Helen has no power to avoid her role as a scapegoat, ergo correlating the first explanation for her unaccountability with the second: lack of power. Critic Judith Fetterley describes the politics of power in literature as disguised powerlessness.[48] Within the story of Helen a social myth has been fashioned to promote the concept of female power and male powerlessness, a myth which inverts reality.[49] Whereas Helen may appear to have power over men, she truly has no ability to affect the war. Rather, her beauty moves men to war. It has become an entity in itself, a vibrant force so dynamic that its description is limited to a few lines in the Iliad.[50] Men revere her beauty, and her looks have great influence over their actions and words. Yet, this influence cannot be mistaken for power. She understands the influence her beauty has over other people, but she does not have any control over it. Real power would require Helen to have both the knowledge of her influence and to have direct control over the decisions made in the name of her beauty. Rather, the soldiers who fight over her and the authors who have written about her valorize Helen’s beauty as if she had some sort of immediate control over it. Valorizing this influence serves “to sustain unequal power relations between” women and men.[51]

This cleverly disguised uneven relationship pervades the entire myth of Helen and supports the most fundamental concept of power in literature: male dominance.[52] The dominators view domination as equality while it appears as oppression to those dominated.[53] Helen’s placement in a supposed dominant position forces her into the role of the scapegoat and compels her to accept the guilt of the warriors as described above. Her elevation furthermore separates her from the rest of society, and this isolation is another form of domination.[54] Because Helen finds herself in a position of presumably superior power to her kin, her supposed power can be examined only from the bottom up. This method of investigation reinforces the idea of blaming Helen, the actual victim of dominance, for all of the problems.[55] The real power lies in the hands of the men who fight for Helen. Whoever owns Helen has the greatest power.[56]

Because she possesses knowledge of her own faults, Helen grievously acknowledges her responsibility for her actions and openly blames herself in the Iliad. She assumes the burden of her guilt and does not allow herself the comfort of self-defense.[57] Despite her own views, others negate her assumption of responsibility, and this negation is the third reason why Helen is held unaccountable. The Trojan elders fall silent as soon as she comes near them. They find her an object worth fighting for and release her from guilt. Menelaus sees Helen as a victim. Priam blames the gods. Hector bares Helen no ill will and would fight another ten years for her if necessary.[58] All of these defenders are men; they have the power to accept their share of the responsibility for the war, but they do not. After using Helen as a scapegoat, they again employ their superiority in their unequal power relationship to exonerate her.

The men speak in favor of Helen, but what about the women? Few female voices exist in the myth as it stands, let alone any who strongly oppose wrongs to themselves, much less wrongs to or by Helen. This lack of feminine protest is the fourth explanation for Helen’s unaccountability. Hecuba, Andromache, and Penelope stand foremost among the silent women. Hecuba can do nothing but weep as her sons die in the war. Afterwards, she helplessly watches as the Argive chieftains enslave both her and her daughters. Few, if any, harsh words fall from Hecuba’s lips maligning Helen. Andromache firmly stands as the antithesis of Helen. Staunchly loyal to her husband Hector, her only scenes in the Iliad present a tender respite from the violence. She finds herself a widow at the end of the war, loses a child when her infant is thrown from the walls of Troy, and eventually becomes a slave. Again, any slander toward Helen is conspicuously absent. Penelope suffers day after day in the Odyssey as the barbarous suitors plague her home. She patiently bides her time and wisely forestalls those who press her to remarry. In the midst of all of this woe, she never blames anyone for her misfortunes. These women, along with many others, speak few acrimonious words against Helen. They each fulfill the role of the suffering woman. Caught within the same patriarchal structure as Helen, they might understand her entrapment. However, they must also want to lash out at the woman who is partly responsible for the deaths and absences of their husbands and sons. The main exception to this rule is Cassandra, the doomed prophetess who foretells the destruction Paris will bring to Troy and foresees the enslavement of the Trojan women after the war.

As mentioned above, the name Helen of Troy stands for an archetype of beauty. This archetype gives credence to the stereotype that “what you see is what you get” and is the final explanation as to why Helen is held unaccountable for her actions. Since the time of the Trojan War, a mistaken belief has arisen that if Helen is physically beautiful, then she must also be morally virtuous as well. While Helen does not epitomize evil, she has committed heinous acts, including adultery, abandonment, and endangerment. These facts, notwithstanding, even if Helen were morally corrupt, most people would still gloss over her flaws due to her appearance.

Beauty does not necessarily equate with virtue. Mass murderer Ted Bundy aptly illustrates this concept. Even during his trials for the rape and murder of several young women, his looks, charm, and intelligence captivated the public. By the same token, ugliness does not necessarily equate with immorality. Quasimodo, the bell-ringing hunchback in Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, often suffers from this stereotype. Others heap misery on him because of his deformities. Both cases reinforce the misguided notion that behavior and physical looks coincide with one another, the very same notion that troubles Helen. The insistence on her physical looks marginalizes her as an individual. In the end, as long as she remains nothing more than an icon of beauty, she cannot accept responsibility for the poor decisions she makes.

Helen of Troy has gone down in literature and mythology as the face that launched a thousand warships. She did bring the Argives and Trojans together, but she was not a strong enough motivation to sustain the melee. Her poor decisions allow readers to lay blame for the entire war inappropriately at her feet. Others use her beauty as an excuse to absolve Helen of guilt. Until a person looks past her physical appearance, examines her decisions, and investigates the politics of power holding Helen back from accepting responsibility, she cannot escape the trap in which her beauty and passions place her.

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[1] Robert Emmet Meagher, Helen: Myth, Legend, and the Culture of Misogyny (New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1995), ix.

[2] J. E. Zimmerman, ed., “Helen of Troy,” in Dictionary of Classical Mythology (New York: Bantam Books, 1971), 118.

[3] Albert Payson Terhune, Superwomen (New Jersey: Moffat Yard and Company, 1916), 64.

[4] Barry B. Powell, Classical Myth (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001), 520.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Jack Lindsay, Helen of Troy: Woman and Goddess (London: The Anchor Press, Ltd., 1974), 257.

[7] Terhune, Superwomen, 81.

[8] Powell, Classical Myth, 554.

[9] Linda Lee Clader, Helen: The Evolution from Divine to Heroic in Greek Epic Tradition (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1976), 10.

[10] Meagher, Helen: Myth, Legend, and the Culture of Misogyny, 1, 10. 

[11] Mihoko Suzuki, Metamorphoses of Helen: Authority, Difference, and the Epic (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1989), 1.

[12] Terhune, Superwomen, 76; Rachel Bespaloff, “On the Iliad,” in Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, Volume 1, eds. Dennis Poupard and Jelena O. Krstovic (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1988), 343.

[13] Bespaloff, “On the Iliad,” 344.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis, The Internet Classics Archive, ed. Daniel C. Stevenson; <http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/iphi_aui.pl.txt>; accessed November 30, 2002.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Aeschylus, Agamemnon, trans. Robert Fagles, in The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, ed. Maynard Mack (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), 383.

[18] Ibid., 354, 362, 382.

[19] Homer, Odyssey, trans. Robert Fitzgerald, in The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, ed. Maynard Mack (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), 175.

[20] Meagher, Helen: Myth, Legend, and the Culture of Misogyny, 49.

[21] Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. Robert Fitzgerald, in The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, ed. Maynard Mack (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997), 665.

[22] Ibid. 

[23] “Guinevere,” Encyclopaedia Britannica Online; <http://www.eb.comarticle?eu=350244&query= lancelot>; accessed November 12, 2002.

[24] Donald M. Foerster, Homer in English Criticism (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1947), 78.

[25] Bowra, C. M., “An excerpt from Tradition and Design in The Iliad,” Literature Resource Center; <http://www.galenet.com/servlet/LitRC?c=3&stab=512&ai=149783&ste=16&docNum=H1420014748&bConts=16047&tab=2&vrsn=3&ca=21&tbst=arp&ST=Homer&srchtp=athr&n=10&locID=jack11383&OP=contains>; accessed October 1, 2002.

[26] Meagher, Helen: Myth, Legend, and the Culture of Misogyny, 37–38.

[27] Homer, Iliad, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1959), 104–07.

[28] Rachel Bespaloff, “Helen,” in Homer: A Collection of Critical Essays, eds. George Steiner and Robert Fagles (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962), 102.

[29] Edwin Arnold, “Homer,” in Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, Volume 1, eds. Dennis Poupard and Jelena O. Krstovic (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1988), 309.

[30] Homer, Iliad, 162.

[31] Ibid., 495.

[32] Ibid., 104.

[33] Bespaloff, “Helen,” 104.

[34] Homer, Iliad, 79–80.

[35] Ibid., 80–88.

[36] Powell, Classical Myth, 509.

[37] Ibid., 33, 37.

[38] Bespaloff, “On the Iliad,” 343.

[39] Terhune, Superwomen, 74.

[40] Lindsay, Helen of Troy: Woman and Goddess, 103.

[41] Eugene Oswald, The Legend of Fair Helen As told By Homer, Goethe, and Others (London: John Murry, 1905), 28.

[42] Wilfred L. Guerin, Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, Jeanne C. Reeseman, and John Willingham, eds., A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 158.

[43] Homer, Iliad, 104.

[44] Ibid., 162.

[45] Arnold, “Homer,” 309–10.

[46] Homer, Iliad, 110–11.

[47] Bespaloff, “Helen,” 100.

[48] Judith Fetterley, “Introduction on the politics of literature,” in Feminisms: An anthology of literary theory and criticism, eds. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1993), 493.

[49] Ibid., 500.

[50] Gilbert Murray, “The Iliad as a Great Poem,” in Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, Volume 1, eds. Dennis Poupard and Jelena O. Krstovic (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1988), 313.

[51] Judith Lowder Newton, “Power and the Ideology of ‘Woman’s Sphere,’” in Feminisms: An anthology of literary theory and criticism, eds. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1993), 767.

[52] Guerin, A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, 187.

[53] Nancy Hartsock, “Foucault on Power: A Theory for Woman,” in Feminisms: An anthology of literary theory and criticism, eds. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1993), 168.

[54] Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 8, 11.

[55] Hartsock, “Foucault on Power: A Theory for Women,” 169.

[56] Fetterley, “Introduction on the politics of literature,” 495.

[57] Bespaloff, “On the Iliad,” 343.

[58] Arnold, “Homer,” 309.