Whether you grew up chanting Homeric dactylic hexameter like it was a nursery rhyme or whether you have not even heard the name “Percy Jackson,” there is one myth, indeed one mythological figure, familiar to nearly everyone in the western world: Helen of Troy. She is the catalyst for the Trojan War, the undisputed most beautiful woman to ever have lived, and a surprisingly complex and maligned figure.
Though her first appearance in literature (in book three of Homer’s Iliad, to be precise) gives a distinct characterization of Helen, the Homeric interpretation of her character has been lost to the more contemporary retellings of her story and motivations. Modern readers reference Helen as a quintessential coquette or a scheming seductress. Her affair and elopement with Paris, the infamous events that precipitated the Trojan War, are frequently written off as either a fling gone out of hand, or as a flippant, perhaps even malicious, desire for praise and admiration at any cost. When Helen appears in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, written comparatively recently in 1592, Faustus declares, “Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?” before kissing and dismissing Helen—who, incidentally, does not speak a word. I see Faustus’ treatment of Helen—as a beautiful prop to be condemned and dismissed—as a prototype for modernity’s treatment of Helen. She is a prop, not just for Faustus, but for any who wish to make a degrading example of a beautiful woman. She has become a figurehead at whom centuries of criticism have been flung. Euripides’ words in his 5th century B.C. play called Helen were prophetic: “I—not I, my name—was made the prize.”
Helen has lost the complexity of her character to the uncharitable reading of a contemporary audience. It is now acceptable to believe that the Trojan war and its subsequent destruction were obviously entirely her fault.
It is fun to blame the beautiful, to tear down what once shone and to spit on what one has condemned—it provides a perverse feeling of power—but it is also an ignorant reading of the original source material. What image of Helen would be shown if the words recorded by ancient Greek poets and playwrights were to be taken into account? That of a flawed, suffering, exhausted woman struggling to survive under the weight of shame and regret.
The Helen of the Iliad constantly degrades herself, using words such as “hateful” to describe herself and lamenting that she did not die before bringing such pain to others. Later, in her lament for Hector, Helen mentions the verbal abuse she endured by others and the unexpected kindness shown to her by Hector who would “restrain them with words” and protect her. Similarly, Priam, the king of Troy, explicitly states that he does not blame Helen for causing the war and shows her kindness. Even Menelaus, the Greek husband who Helen abandons for Paris, is described in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon as heartbroken—not angry or vengeful—by the loss of his wife. Given the frankly sympathetic treatment of Helen in ancient texts written in a supposedly misogynistic society, it seems surprising that a modern, supposedly more progressive audience would regard her with such mocking disdain. This disdain begs the question: where did this come from?
Helen, though an impossibly beautiful demigoddess, has a quality that all can relate to (though to acknowledge this is deeply uncomfortable)—she has made a mistake and she knows it. Whether by the whims of the gods or by her own passions, Helen has done something she knows is wrong and has no way to correct. This, put in its most simple terms, is exactly where all humanity finds themselves. We are flawed, we cause pain, and we are incapable of fixing ourselves.
When we criticize Helen we can feel the false relief of self-righteousness and the protection that fiction and thousands of years grant us, but we cannot deny that in some way we are all Helen—broken, full of regret, and seeking forgiveness. Is it possible to love the woman who all of Greece apparently hates? Perhaps a better question would be: is it possible to love others—to show grace to them and ourselves—when we fully understand their and our failings? This is the goal of the Christian. This is the kind of love we receive from God and strive to give one another.
Forgiveness is not beautiful because it comes to those who deserve it, but rather because it relieves those who, like Helen, weep with the knowledge of how undeserving they are.
I just taught the Iliad to my high schoolers and now will read them this outstanding essay. Thank you for writing and publishing this important perspective in Helen and for making the problem of Helen relevant to the modern audience.