Welcome to the next instalment of 'Solving the Problem of Helen'.
As I have mentioned before, Helen is a bit confounding for contemporary feminist myth writers. None of the options for Helen are particularly empowering. Either she’s a master manipulator, in which women are vilified and blamed for men’s actions and she is a heartless succubus, or she's a powerless victim with no agency, blamed for a war which she played no active role in.
The questions that always recur are:
Did she consent to go with Paris? Did she love him? Or, did she love Menelaus, and she was stolen by the Trojan prince? Or, did she not love either of them, and she made the choice because of a desire for … action, adventure, variety, notoriety &c.? Did she have any power to make the decision at all, or had she always just been the property of the men around her?
Last time, I discussed Margaret George's Helen of Troy, which is distinctive in its adaptive choice to portray Helen and Paris' relationship as a completely consensual romance.
This time, I will tell you all about Helen in Claire Heywood's Daughters of Sparta (2021).
**SPOILERS AHEAD**
Daughters of Sparta is also a love story... it's about the love between two sisters, Helen and Klytemnestra.
The novel follows Helen and Klytemnestra through the events of their epic mythos, as well as filling the gaps of the mythological tradition with human experiences, looking at the private lives of Helen and Klytemnestra: the joys and traumas of childbirth and motherhood; how family ties survive marriages that move you away from home; how women feel about war, both when it sends their menfolk away and when it is right at the gate; and how women negotiate systemic powerlessness to get what they need, whether that is revenge, being listened to, or simply birth control.
Sisters Before Misters!
 |
| Attic Pyxis 500BC-470BC. On the far left, Helen is seated, confronted by Klyemnestra, standing, with her hair down. On the right, Iphigenia is exiting a doorway, attended on the far right by Danae. The two women in the centre are unnamed. Source. |
The novel gives us everything we didn’t know we wanted from a Helen adaptation: it gives us sisterhood. We see Helen and Klytemnestra playing as children in Sparta, with Helen asking her sister who she wants to marry and Klytemnestra replying, ‘Someone kind, I hope. And wise. And a good father’, while younger, more naïve Helen simply ‘hope[s] my husband is handsome,’ (Heywood 2021: 21).
Our hearts ache, knowing what is to come for these girls at the hands of their husbands.
Our hearts ache in particular for young Klytemnestra, as she feels an obligation to protect her younger sister against forces she is powerless to halt, such as rumours of Helen the Bastard and the men who seek to tarnish her reputation to gain some cheap fame (looking at you, Theseus).
When Klytemnestra leaves Sparta for Mycenae, and we see the heartfelt goodbye between the two sisters, it is really clear that this is not a novel about the Atreus brothers and their Trojan War, it’s a novel about two sisters parted by cursed marriages:
‘Nestra!’ cried Helen, running to embrace her. ‘I was worried you’d already gone!’
‘I would never leave without saying goodbye,’ said Klytemnestra, hugging her sister tightly.
‘I wish you didn’t have to go at all.’ Helen complained, looking as if she might cry.
‘So do I,’ she breathed, kissing the top of her sister’s shining head. ‘So do I, Helen, but I must.’ She pulled away and gave a brave smile so that Helen would not get upset.
‘I don’t see why though. You said we could both stay here. You said we’d raise out children together and––’
‘I know… I know I said that. But the Fates have spun a different future for us. We cannot argue against them. It will be for the best, you will see.’ (Ibid., 41-2)
In Heywood’s novel, it is Klytemnestra who voices the debates surrounding Helen’s agency:
She feared for Helen. She must be so afraid, taken from her home, raped by a foreign man. But if she had not been raped, if she had left willingly… The thought was not much better. Oh Helen. What have you done? (Heywood 2021: 196)
Klytemnestra does not know whether Helen consented to going with Paris, but what distinguishes this from when these questions are posed by, for example, Atwood’s Penelope (‘Helen Ruins My Life […] Helen the lovely, Helen the septic bitch, root cause of all my misfortunes’) or Miller’s Achilles (‘he put on his best singer’s falsetto. “A thousand ships have sailed for her. […] Maybe she was bored”’) is that Klytemnestra’s questions come from a place of love.
This sisterhood distinguishes the novel from other adaptations of Helen, because it provides a more empathetic perspective on her story.
Moreover, the novel reframes Helen’s choices so that they are no longer defined by men. For example, she chooses to marry Menelaus so that she will be ‘sisters twice over’ (Ibid., 65) with Klytemnestra (since their husbands are brothers so they will be both sisters and sisters-in-law) and geographically closer to her sister, so they are more likely to see one another. In doing this, the novel prioritises their closeness with one another over their infamous marital and extramarital relationships.
Thus, the Trojan War is reclaimed as, in Weigle’s (1999: 969) terms, a women’s mythology.
 |
| 'Helen of Troy' by mythsntits. |
So, let’s ask the same question as Klytemnestra: Oh Helen. What have you done?
That is, what choice does Heywood make when adapting Helen’s myth? Abduction or romance? Blameless victim or heartless succubus?
In this text, Paris seduces Helen, and she goes with him fairly willingly, but the scales quickly fall from her eyes as she realises that ‘she had only ever been his prize, like that poor beautiful creature he wore about his shoulders’ (Heywood 2021: 282). In comparing herself to the leopard hide that Paris wears as a cape, she fully acknowledges that he views her as little more than an adornment and a testament to his status; Paris says directly to her that ‘you are my woman, I won you and I took you. The most beautiful woman in the world is mine,’ (Ibid., 282) which is a stark acknowledgement of her objectification, accentuated by the language of possession that Paris chooses.
This is a far cry from Margaret George’s enthusiastic romance, though it really cements the idea that Helen’s crime is to be seduced. Meanwhile, rather than portraying Paris as a hopeless romantic and a naïve boy, this novel lies the blame at his door –– he seduced Helen because he wanted the most beautiful woman in the world as his trophy, never mind the fact that she is an actual human person, and he is about as chauvinistic and petulant as you would expect.
Last time, we saw a Helen who does the kissing, and not because she is a bored wife in Sparta, or because of some political manoeuvring, but because she enthusiastically consents to being with Paris. George’s Helen of Troy solves the “problem” of Helen by finally making her happy and loved.
So, how does Daughters of Sparta help solve the “problem” of Helen? What ending does she get?
Helen, like Menelaus, lives through a traumatic war, and when they meet again, with Troy burning around them, ‘Something had changed between them. An almost imperceptible change.’ –– Menelaus acknowledges that ‘A wife should not be lonely in her own home’ (ibid., 322-3) and, finally, after nearly 3 millennia of Helen’s mythos, he asks her what she wants when they get back to Sparta!
So, again, it appears that the answer to the question ‘How do you solve a problem like Helen?’ is to simply… ask her what she wants. In some texts, what Helen wants is to be in a passionate and mutually respecting relationship with Paris; in some texts, what she wants is to not be alienated in her home in Sparta. Overall, though, what we’re seeing again and again, is that Helen wants to be seen, as a person, as a woman, as anything other than the most beautiful woman in the world, the face that launched a thousand ships, the impossible beauty and its dreadful consequences.
 |
| 'Grumpy Goddess' by mythsntits. |
The face that launched a thousand ships…
Coming soon…
Solving the Problem of Helen: Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships (2019).
Next time…
How do you Solve a Problem like Clytemnestra?
Since Helen can share her narrative with her sister in Daughters of Sparta, I thought she wouldn’t mind sharing the ‘Solving the Problem…’ series with her too.
This blog post will ask what the problems are with Clytemnestra’s mythos, how her myths have been weaponised by patriarchy throughout the centuries, and how she is being adapted in more recent women’s writing, including Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships and Claire Haywood’s Daughters of Sparta. See you there!
If you are able, please consider supporting me via Ko-Fi
Comments
Post a Comment