the face that launched a thousand ships
on Helen of Troy
in this, the year of Barbie and America Ferrera’s monologue, I have been thinking about the position of women in memory. in this, the year of Maisie Peters’ song History of Man, I have also been thinking of the lyric “he stole our youth and promised heaven / the men start wars yet Troy hates Helen” which really means I have been thinking about Helen.
I remember so clearly sitting down with The Iliad in my freshman year of college, my highlighters around me. I remember reading Helen’s name. I remember underlining it, drawing a heart next to it, and marking it with my extra special post-its. when the opportunity came to select a paper topic for the class, I did not need to think twice.
I remember the frustration settling into my bones as I wrote the paper. I remember crying with disappointment and compassion and understanding. I remember reading the name Helen again afterwards and feeling it like a stab to the heart.
what follows is an adapted version of my paper. it focuses on the narrative fragmentation of Helen of Troy across Homer’s Iliad, Odyssey, and Herodotus’ Histories. more than that, though, it’s an attempt to convey the impossibility - and therefore the inescapability - of being a woman in a world that seeks to remember you only as it fragments and invents you.
there is, of course, a large chance I misconstrued, misinterpreted, or left things out - I used translations after all, and the paper required we consult no outside sources - but I felt I needed to share it regardless.
despite being a key character in Ancient Greek literature whose name is mentioned across numerous works, Helen of Troy (or of Sparta, depending on who you are reading), remains an ambiguous figure whose aims, desires, and role in her own journey remain uncertain. the retention of her memory within works such as The Iliad, The Odyssey and Herodotus’ The Histories lacks cohesion. her internal and external worlds have been fragmented into contradicting accounts. her character itself is displaced, unable to exist as a single self, and interpreted as makes sense to the specific work’s plot. being ‘Helen’ is, in fact, made impossible by contradiction and liminality.
let us begin with a question, perhaps the question. did Helen, when she left Sparta and her husband, Menelaos, to join Paris in Troy, run willingly and with full knowledge of what repercussions would surely follow?
in both The Iliad and The Histories the account of Helen’s journey to Troy is scattered between willing participation and violent kidnapping. she is portrayed in her own speeches as a willing participant in the abandonment of her family, stating she had been “following” Paris and “forsaking” her home (Iliad, 3.174) and is seen in retrospect as having been given “the wings to flee” by Paris, implying she ran willingly from an undesired life (Histories, 2.112).
yet it is not that simple. these same speeches and retrospectives also imply she has been coerced. in The Iliad her reunion with Paris functions as a mirror to a potential departure from Sparta in which Helen is only compliant only out of fear of Aphrodite. further, in her conversation with Paris, Helen is referred to as having been “caught […] up and carried […] away” (Iliad, 3.444) presenting the departure as a forceful kidnapping. she herself characterises the journey as a “blind act” of which she is merely the “dishonoured” subject (Iliad, 6.356). The Histories confirms this account – Helen, though lacking a voice, is perceived in retrospect as having been “abducted” and “seduced,” void of agency and treated unfairly by Paris (Histories, 2.112-114).
The Odyssey adds a third fragment to the narrative – Helen acknowledges her involvement in her departure whilst displacing the responsibility for her actions onto Aphrodite, stating she “made [her] go crazy” (Odyssey, 4.262-3). in light of the goddess’ involvement, she finds herself only partially responsible for her actions. she is neither actively nor passively involved - she finds herself in the liminal space between participation and victimhood.
the second question: whose side was Helen truly on during the Trojan War?
her internal world proves as splintered as her perceived participation. in The Iliad, when hearing about the duel between Menelaos and Paris she begins longing “after her husband of time before, and her city and parents” (Iliad, 3.140), expressing regret over her departure. Helen portrays herself as ‘hateful,’ expressing confusion over why Menelaos would wish to carry her away yet lamenting her marriage to Paris, wishing she “had been the wife of a better man than this is” (Iliad, 6.350). she is, once again, in a liminal space — an emotionally isolated world that belongs to neither side of the war, yet empathises with both.
when looking back on the events of the War in The Odyssey her divided emotions are made clearer. though Helen expresses she “wanted to go home,” denounces any care she might have had for the Trojans, stating she “was glad” (Odyssey, 4.261) of their death, she is described as voluntarily aiding the Trojan war effort moments later. this sequencing of events encourages scepticism over the honesty of Helen’s performance, placing her true emotions under question.
due to the emotional dislocation she is portrayed to experience, Helen’s reaction to grief is similarly disjointed—she openly displays her “weeping,” (Odyssey, 4.185) yet attempts to remove grief from the situation the moment it becomes too apparent, numbing it with drugs. the contradictory nature of her desires places her in a stagnant position - she is both continuously lamenting and constantly preoccupied with expressing too much grief.
through the authors’ constructions of Helen’s view, then, there are no clear-cut answers, only contradictory fragments. Helen herself remains displaced both in her physical environment and emotional world.
she floats between mortality and divinity - in both The Histories and The Iliad she is equated to Aphrodite, beautiful enough to have a “sanctuary” yet dislocated from the mortal world, a “foreign” (Histories, 2.112) and displaced Aphrodite.
she does not fit neatly into the Trojan nor the Greek community: in The Iliad she is condemned by the elders who detach her from “[them] and [their] children” (Iliad, 3.160) while Priam, “feared and respected” (Iliad, 3.172) and distant, despite naming her “child,” (Iliad, 3.162) identifies the Greeks as her people, excluding her from the Trojan community. simultaneously, she is no longer a member of the Greek community, having shamefully abandoned it thus preventing an honourable return to her former position. Aphrodite herself plays on this disconnection, stating she would “forsake” and “grow to hate” Helen, surrounding her “in hard hate, caught between both sides” (Iliad, 3.414-6) which suggests further displacement from either side while emphasising the already-present dislocation.
her mental state is unstable in itself - in her conversation with Aphrodite her heart is “confused with sorrows,” (Iliad, 3.412) portraying an uncertainty in intention. she refers to herself as “a nasty bitch evil-intriguing”, wishes for death on numerous occasions, and is derisive towards Paris for not having Menelaos’ strength. on the other hand, she expresses continued resentment towards her role as Menelaos’ wife.
the final question: if she does not go neatly into any category or community, how is she perceived by them? as an agent or as a means to an end, a prize to be won by the winning side?
in The Iliad Helen holds no role in establishing the terms of the duel between Menelaos and Paris and is regarded entirely as an object to be carried off as a spoil of war. similarly, in The Odyssey her actions at Troy are attributed to an outside influence: she is “urged … on” by “some spirit who desired to glorify the Trojans” (Odyssey, 4.274-275) and therein utilised as a strategic pawn. in The Histories such a perception of Helen is expounded and Helen is referred to in terms of treasure—“this woman and the valuables”—mentioned as no more than a stolen good whom Menelaos must come and “fetch” (Histories, 2.115). moreover, the entire Trojan War is defined by Herodotus in terms of either having or not having Helen, emphasising her role as a possession or an object.
the lack of agency is consistent until we reach The Odyssey and the fragmentation occurs again. Helen is portrayed not only as an agent but one empowered by their actions. she is equalled to Artemis, the goddess of hunting, which emphasises her strength, and is more observant and freely spoken, addressing Menelaos freely where she treated Priam with caution in The Iliad. she is additionally described as having “cut in first” (Odyssey, 15.170) when her husband was about to speak and making a prophecy, which highlights the power she commands both in her home and as a diviner.
once again, Helen floats - she is between victim and matriarch, between object and agent.
the contradictions accumulate until Helen is displaced in both her own and the communal memory of the time. a ghost, an echo.
in The Iliad, Helen moves between questioning her own memory in “Did this ever happen?” indicating her perception and retention of events is insecure. her depiction of Agamemnon as “widely powerful, at the same time a good king and a strong spearfighter” (Iliad, 3.178-9) is contradictory to the impression of an arrogant leader expressed by the Greeks, implying her memory is warped and unreliable. lines later, however, her recognition and cognisant recall of all the Greek soldiers proves her memory of individuals outside her immediate narrative remains intact. in fact, her memory only breaks once she is personally involved yet remains stable when recalling information of a wider history - she is displaced only from her own narrative, the division of her desires and narrative warped only in the personal realm
as a result of such a dislocation from personal memory, Helen is unable to place herself within the larger historical memory. in The Iliad she is aware of her own importance, stating “we shall be made into things of song” (Iliad, 6.358). in The Odyssey, on the other hand*,* she is overly concerned with being remembered by Telemachus, providing him with gifts which show off her craft and instructing him to “remember Helen,” (Odyssey, 15.124) indicating she believed she would be forgotten if she did not personally ensure otherwise.
if you’ve made it this far, you may wonder why Helen’s fragmentation is even important enough that I’ve spent paragraphs upon paragraphs of this post on it. my answer would be to point to Barbie, yes, but also to the infinite list of the archetypes, expectations, interpretations, and censorships men have imposed on women over the course of history. it’s useless to pretend this doesn’t still happen - one only has to glance over to the Depp v Heard trial or the recent attempts made by Joe Jonas to frame Sophie Turner as a bad mother in the wake of their divorce.
such public manipulation of women’s images by men has never been a one-man pursuit. homer likely merely noted down poems that had been in the epic tradition for years beforehand, myths that originated in the Mycenaen ages, and stories that reflected the cultural zeitgeist of their periods. Johnny Depp took advantage of a greater build-up of contempt for the MeToo movement to rouse vitriol against Amber Heard online, as Rayne Fisher-Quann writes:
“ever since the advent of the mainstream MeToo movement, the public (even women, even some so-called feminists) has been foaming at the mouth for a neat, uncomplicated example of an evil woman publicly conspiring to bring a good man down. The problem, of course, is that an instance of that is hard to actually find, and so — to paraphrase Voltaire — it became necessary to invent one.”
how we remember women holds meaning and weight, especially as the weight of their memory increases over time. the fragmentation of Helen’s narrative allows her to fall within any role authors want, but it also means she can never embody them fully. yes, her character might grow more complex as further fragmentation occurs, but it prevents her from being in her own right within any single work. she is always placed in reaction to Troy, in reaction to Sparta, invented according to the particular archetype (remorseful or deceitful) that is needed at that particular moment. she is a tool for the narrative, whatever the narrative is. and she is spectral; an echo, an object, a ghost, ‘the face who launched a thousand ships’ - the rest is air.
Helen can never be a woman, not only because she is half-divine or a myth, but because the weight of expectations and interpretations placed on her character literally pushes it out of existence, into the liminal space of both/neither. funnily enough, this weight is precisely what women experience daily and historically. it is precisely what makes Helen a woman.
loved this!