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.
Comments
Post a Comment