The character of Helen in The Iliad

Helen in Greek mythology, the daughter of Zeus and Leda (or Nemesis), wife of King Menelaus of Sparta is thought to be the most beautiful woman in the world.  Her abduction by Paris brought about the Trojan War. Anyone reading about this mythic character does not obtain any unified perspective by various writers. Some writers including Homer take on entirely negative views of Helen. While other writers bear both positive and complex views. Now we will evaluate the character of Helen in The Iliad.

Though Helen does not have any active part in Homer’s The Iliad—she appeares before us only six times, all the incidents take place for her.

The exquisite beauty of Helen is well known. If anyone wants to refer to any beauty, he mostly uses allusion, simile or metaphor of Helen, the paragon of beauty. Even characters like Dr. Faustus in Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus long for having Helen beside them—

“Sweet Helen, make me immotal with a kiss—

Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flees!—

          Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.”  

However, Faustus is also consciuos of  Helen’s destructive power,

          “Was this the face that launced a thousand ships,

          And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? —“  

Such is the modern reception of Helen. In the same way, the myth as indicated in Homers The Iliad tells us of the effect of Helen’s beauty. When it was time for Helen to marry, many kings and princes from around the world came to seek her hand or sent emissaries to do so on their behalf. Helen's father, Tyndareus, would not choose a suitor, or send any of the suitors away, for fear of offending them and giving grounds for a quarrel....

Even the Trojan elders could not but accept her overpowering beauty in the following way—

“No one could blame the Trojan’s and Greek men-at-arms for suffering so long for such a woma’s sake. She is fearfully like the immortal goddesses.” (3:157-159)  

Homer, in the epic, has a slightly complex view of Helen's character. The Iliad is filled with negative references toward Helen from most of the characters who mention her name. Whenever Helen is present in the story, she displays self consciousness about the scandal of her behavior, in leaving her husband for a foreigner and causing the war at Troy. Not only does Helen disgrace herself by choosing a foreigner over her own husband, but she disgraces all of Hellas who go to war for ten years over such an unvirtuous woman.

Helen is not only treated as the cause of the Trojan war, but she is also a helpless captive. She became the type of all women who bring woe to men. However, this entirely negative view of Helen is made more complicated by the fact that Helen is marked by undecidability (Suzuki, 1989).

Homer represents Helen in The Iliad who scorns her second husband, Paris, and longs for what she left behind. Helen blames herself, and wishes that she had never betrayed her husband,

"...if only death had pleased me then, grim death, the day I followed your son to Troy, forsaking my marriage bed, my kinsmen, and my child" (Homer)

In this passage, Helen's vile nature,  her remorse and self- hatred,  the question of her responsibility for the war have been left somewhat ambiguous and unanswered.

However, Helen still remains a symbol for doubleness. Being married to Paris, a Trojan citizen, and protected and cared for by his family, Helen should have been loyal to the Trojans. But we see when Helen is speaking with Telemachus, Odysseus' son, she tries to illustrate her loyalty towards the Greeks by explaining that she did not give away Odysseus' identity when he was disguised. This casts a malevolent light on Helen's loyalty.

In this story, Helen is a constant comparison to Penelope, who has remained faithful to her husband. Like Helen before her marriage to Menelaus, Penelope is beset by many suitors. Unlike Helen who yielded to Paris in her husband's shorter absence, Penelope fends off her suitors. Penelope successfully defends against becoming an object of exchange (Suzuki, 1989).

Helen has mixed feelings because she feels some complicity in her own abduction and realizes how much death and suffering has been the result. That her Trojan husband is not terribly manly compared with his brother or her first husband only increases her feelings of regret.

“So you are back from battlefield... You used to boast you were a better man than warlike Menelaus... Go and challenge him to fight again...” (3:428-532)

However a question arises if Helen is wholly responsible for her relationship with Paris or just a prey in the hands of gods. For answer we can quote King Priam’s comment,

“ I don’t hold you responsible for any of this, but the gods. It is they who brought on me this war against the Greeks, with all its tears.” (3:164-165)

The point will be further clear with the conversation between  Helen and Aphrodite. Aphrodite has saved Paris from Menelous’ hand, and now she wants to send Helen to his bed. But Helen does not want to go there suspecting something like what Aphrodite compelled her to do with Paris. She says,

“You are plotting, I suppose, to carry me off to some still more distant town, in Phrygia or lovely Maeonia, togratify some other favourite of yours who may be living in those parts.”

 As a result, being anraged, Aphrodite again compels Helen to obey her with her warning speech,

“Obstinate Wretched! Don’t get the wrong side of me , or I may desert you in my anger and detest you as vehemently as I have loved you up till now, and provoke Greeks and Trojans alike to such hatred of you that you would come to a dreadful end.” (3:445-449)

           The above conversation shows that Helen is a victim and not a worshipper of Aphrodite and also indicates the mythological fact that she is compelled so share her bed with many peoples, who loved her passionately but only loved her body. The five husbands that she took successively into her bed are Theseus, Menelaos, Paris, Deiphobos and Achilles.

Now we will see how other writers treat Helen in their works. Alkaios holds that Helen forsaking her feminine duty is responsible for the destruction of Troy. To Hesiod and Aeschylus, Helen attributes to her the responsibility for sacrilegious deeds. Aeschylus  finds “hell” in the etymological derivation in her name. In Euripides' character Andromache says that for Helen's fault the Greeks and Trojans fought. However, Euripides in his play Helen shows that Helen never went to Troy at all: the real Helen was reunited with Menelaus after the Trojan War. Like Penelope in The Odyssey, Helen is another faithful wife story. Sappho uses Helen as an example of the idea that whatever one loves appears most desirable (Sappho's Lyre, 1991).

We can clearly see in art, literature, and poetry, that Helen is one of the most ambiguous characters of antiquity. She has been portrayed in different sources, and even by the same authors in opposite extremes. According to some, Helen is an innocent victim who was abducted and slandered, according to others she was a good Spartan goddess, while others believed that she was an evil source of shame who caused much death and suffering to Greeks and Trojans alike.We can only guess at the reasons for these authors contradictory perceptions of this woman.