Authors may choose to present the characters in their works as complex and multilayered, depending on how the said characters perceive themselves and how other characters perceive them. The character of Helen features prominently in many Greek plays, notable for her role in the Trojan War, which claimed many lives on both sides of the war. And while many people consider her bad, she is hardly ever allowed to defend her reputation. In three of his plays, the Greek tragedian Euripides explores the complexity of Helen in Orestes, Trojan Women, and Helen. In the former two plays, Helen is presented and perceived by most of the characters as bad, although in Helen, she reclaims her name and reputation by telling her side of the story, which reveals that she is a good person and her character is not morally questionable. In this paper, I will discuss how the perception of the character of Helen changes from bad to good across Euripides’s Orestes, Trojan Women, and Helen.
In Orestes, blame is cast upon Helen for her role in the war. Electra, Orestes’s sister, states that she hates Helen because she is self-centered and proud. Electra prays that the gods curse Helen for her ruining Electra’s family and Greece in general. Electra also compares Helen to the latter’s twin sister, Clytemnestra, daughter of Tyndareus, who brings shame and dishonor to the house of Atreus. Pylades, Orestes’s friend, equally hates Helen for being the cause of the war, which claimed the lives of children, husbands, and fathers of Greeks. Pylades contends that all of Greece will celebrate Helen’s death penalty because her death will be a fair retribution for her supposed crimes. He urges Orestes to kill Helen, terming such a deed honorable since Helen had killed thousands. Even Helen’s father, Tyndareus, does not defend her in the face of criticism. He considers Helen, a worthless woman and criticizes Menelaus’s costly voyage to Troy to retrieve her. In addition, the Chorus says that Helen’s elopement with Paris brought a lot of pain and suffering and Greece. To everyone else in the play, Helen is an agent of pain, death, and destruction and is more or less responsible for the death and suffering of the Greeks due to the war in Troy.
In Trojan Women, Helen is still blamed for the Trojan War. Menelaus proposes postponing Helen’s immediate execution in Troy so that he can take her back to Hellas and execute her there for all her role in the deaths of many Greeks. Hecuba, Helen’s Trojan mother-in-law, castigates Helen’s act of eloping with Paris and urges Menelaus to kill Helen because she deserves to die. Hecuba further tells Menelaus to set a law that makes betraying one’s husband a capital offense, with Helen serving as the first victim. Hecuba blames Helen for destroying Priam’s house. She tells Hector’s wife, Andromache, that Helen was responsible for bringing the latter’s house down and that Helen was responsible for the death of Andromache’s infant son, Astyanax. In the play, the other characters gang against Helen and blame her for the war and the pain and destruction that came with the war.
In Euripides’s Helen, Helen tells her story, which is untold in the previous plays. While it may be easy to criticize Helen based on the one-dimensional perception of the character in Orestes and Trojan Women, Helen presents a different view of the character, which is starkly different from what is earlier known. Helen reveals that the character that most of Greece hate is not her but her Eidolon. She asserts that she did not go to Troy with Paris but instead went to Egypt, where she has been all along awaiting Menelaus’s return. The war was precipitated by Hera, who lost the beauty contest to Aphrodite, and thus the goddess, in vengeance, made Helen the object of conflict. She claims she is innocent of all the accusations made against her and that her name has been slandered and used to start and perpetuate the Trojan War. At the start of the play, Helen faces criticism and abuse akin to the one observed in the former two plays, only this time from Teucer and the first messenger. Nonetheless, Helen can defend herself, saying that she has been used to test the courage of the Trojans and that she had no role in the war, at least in her present body. Thus, her reputation was damaged, although she was not responsible for the same. Thus, the messenger who initially criticizes her absolves her, telling her she did not bring shame to her father’s house. After all, she has kept her bed unadulterated, a crime she is accused of. It becomes easier to perceive Helen as the protagonist in the play since she can prove her innocence and her determination to preserve the sanctity of her marriage to Menelaus. Moreover, she comes up with a plan to save Menelaus and herself from the claws of Theoclymenus, who wants to marry her. Consequently, Theoclymenus becomes the antagonist while Helen earns the protagonist role, particularly since the audience knows Helen’s story while Theoclymenus does not. Therefore, Helen absolves the character of all her supposed crimes and earns her the audience’s favor.
In conclusion, Euripides’s representation of Helen across the three plays reveals how a one-dimensional view of a situation can harm a character. In particular, the three plays reveal that Helen’s failure to defend herself criminalizes her role in the Trojan War, with everyone accusing her of all the suffering, death, and destruction that resulted from the Greek War. However, given the opportunity to defend her name, Helen successfully narrates that she is the victim rather than the villain and that she is a good person after all.
Works Cited
Euripides. Helen, https://kosmossociety.chs.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Euripides-Helen.pdf
Euripides. Orestes,http://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/euripides/oresteshtml.html
Euripides. Trojan Women, http://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/euripides/womenoftroy.html
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