#theyre both full of righteous fury yall

[dishsaop]

god, there's just something about the way that the iliad opens with brilliant achilles' wrath, and ends with horse-breaker hektor's funeral, but in many ways the story is about helen. helen, who only shows up a meager six times in all of the iliad, and four of those scenes are in the third book, in what is almost one long extended scene.

the iliad is about war, and the consequences of it, and the tragedy of it, and the men that fight in it, but the iliad is centered around helen. christopher marlowe called her 'the face that launched a thousand ships' and i suppose he was right, in a way. helen was who they blamed the war on. and while you can argue whether or not helen went with paris willingly (it will probably not surprise you to know i believe she didn't, not really, but thats a different argument) what i get most angry about is how helen is portrayed.

yes, she's gorgeous. indisputable. aphrodite promised alexandros the most beautiful woman in the world, and that's helen. and it isn't as if the iliad doesn't drive that point home! the old men muttering on the gates with priam and helen say outright that helen is so beautiful, so like a terrible goddess, that neither the trojans nor the greeks can be blamed for the sheer amount of death they've caused. (putting, then, of course, the blame on helen.)

but the old men also say that it would be best if helen went back on the ships, that she's caused too much grief to stay.

because that's the crux of it, isn't it? that helen is miserable, and so is everyone around her. every scene she's in, helen is either being manipulated/influenced by a goddess (aphrodite forcing helen, iris straight up using divine power to make helen feel things), mourning the fact that she's married to the shitstain that is paris, wishing she'd died as a baby, or all three. she's lonely, she's suicidal, and she's shunned by the trojan women (in all by the very last scene, where the trojan women join her in mourning, which is especially upsetting because we know afterwards just after helen has finally been counted among them after twenty years, they're immediately separated as the trojan women are sold as slaves and helen is taken back with menelaos to be 'possessed').

but helen is also angry. she's furious. comments about helen's beauty are passing and brief. but every scene helen is in, she burns with spiteful rage and justified heartbreak. she tells paris she wished he'd died in battle. she tells her brother hektor, in front of paris, that she wishes she could have married someone as brave and noble as hektor, instead of the pompous shameless paris, and wishes that hektor could rest instead of suffering the burden of paris' actions. she stands up to aphrodite.

of all the scenes in the iliad, that one is my favorite. beyond the comedy of helen immediately spotting how weirdly alluring this old woman is and seeing through aphrodite's disguise, helen is incandescent for just a brief tirade. she asks whether aphrodite has found a new pretty boytoy to whisk helen away to, to make aphrodite happy, or if maybe it's back to be possessed by menelaos? helen calls aphrodite treacherous, and refuses her command. helen demands that instead, aphrodite suffer as helen suffers. demands that if aphrodite wants someone to fuck paris so bad, aphrodite can do it herself, can step down forever as a goddess and become paris' wife and slave instead of helen. i will not serve his bed.

helen is furious, and it's only aphrodite's threat (don't make me hate you as i now terribly love you, lest i remind the greeks and trojans alike of their hate and trap you in it to kill you) of death that has helen going to paris. and even there, with aphrodite watching, helen tells paris she wishes he died and that her old husband can and still could kill him. and after that, paris declaims her rage makes her more desirable than ever, even more than when he first stole her.

helen spends a lot of time miserable. wishing she were dead. i think thats perfectly reasonable, spending twenty years in a city where the only two people who are ever kind to her are her father-in-law and brother-in-law. where countless men die just outside her walls and everyone blames her (and she blames herself, deeply). she misses her family, her home, her daughter. she calls herself a bitch, a slut, wishes the gods hadn't laid this on her but let her die at birth. of course she's suicidally depressed. of course she's angry.

but this view of helen as a petty, self-centered vain model is so infuriating because there's no evidence for it! even if you believe that she went with alexandros willingly, she still spends the entire iliad, the few scenes she is allowed, being vengeful, heartbroken, and utterly furious! it's demeaning and telling to reduce her to her beauty. even in six short scenes we get such a wonderful breadth of her character. respectful and awed to priam, admiring and loving to hektor. missing deeply her home and her kin. lonely, wishing for companionship from the women around her, missing the 'lovely young women her age' from home. absolutely, utterly disgusted by paris. heartbroken and pitying and remorseful of the men dying in the war. she speaks of how she cannot find her brothers on the battlefield (the brothers who saved her once from abduction, but not now, perhaps because of the shame of being associated with her?). the way she admires the greeks on the battlefield to priam. and her fear but also unrelenting fury towards aphrodite.

none of those are about, at least solely, her beauty! to helen herself as a character, beauty isn't who she is. she is angry, and hurt, and spiteful, and devastated, and i love her for it!!!!!!