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In William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595),Helena is seen as reliant on the love of a male figure, Demetrius. This reliance is destructive, even to the point of self-sabotage: “The more you beat me, I will fawn on you. / Use me but as your spaniel: spurn me, strike me, / Neglect me, loose me” (2.1.204-06). She pleads to be spurned and stricken, which demonstrates her absolute demoralization and lack of integrity due to her complete infatuation.To audiences, both of the early-modern period and now, Helena can be seen as stereotypically feminine and bound by the patriarchal norms of Shakespeare’s time. As David Scott Kastan explains, these norms are upheld by[early-modern]societal standards that “a woman’s proper role was docile and domestic” (115). However, despite the perception of Helena as a stereotypical early-modern female, one who is nurturing and obedient to her lovers, she defies these heteronormative and patriarchal social perceptions. Defiance of such traditions is seen through the accumulation of Helena’s actions and her relationships. While, as Kastan explains, many female characters in early-modern drama conform to such patriarchal expectations, Helena does not allow herself to be defined as inferior to male lovers.
Helena is complex, allowing scholars to analyze her character and motivations extensively, and some modern scholars demonstrate the depth of Helena’s character in unfamiliar ways. Katherine Heavey asserts that Shakespeare’s usage of the name Helena allows for early-modern audiences to draw comparisons to the fate of the ancient Greek mythological character, Helen of Troy. She then considers how the tragic fate of Helen of Troy, a life of domesticity, resembles that of Helena in her seemingly happy union with Demetrius, which allows audiences to recontextualize the character. Similarly, Melissa Sanchez allows us to see Helena’s relationships in the context of Helena’s destructive fate. Helena goes to great lengths for her love of Demetrius, only for her lover to abuse and berate her in return. Sanchez argues that Helena’s pursuit of love in this way is atypical and that her “exchanges with Demetrius and Hermia reveal that women’s perverse desires – whether for women or for men – can threaten ideals of proper, ‘normal’ ‘sexuality,’” suggesting aspects of homoeroticism or deviance in her close relationships (506). As Sanchez studies Midsummer “through the lenses of sex-radical feminism and queer theory,” she encourages her readers to see that Helena distorts normative portrayals of love. I also argue that Helena’s is a nontraditional portrayal of a female in the early-modern period. However, I believe Helena’s relentless pursuit of Demetrius in his denial of her love empowers her further, showing the untraditional nature of her character in an early-modern context.
Just as Sanchez allows us to analyze Helena’s romantic relationships using queer theory through early-modern ideas of heteronormativity, James Kuzner also reassesses Helena and her relationships. Kuzner compares the stable friendship of Helena and Hermia to the turbulent love of Helena and Demetrius, emphasizing Helena’s romantic uncertainty in their relationship. He states that “Helena has a right to Hermia as a friend. […] Demetrius being Helena’s own but not her own also means that love can’t complete Helena,” suggesting that Helena does not view her love with Demetrius as valid because she does not possess the right to him as a lover in the way she has a right to Hermia as a friend (107). As we will see, these various perspectives recontextualize our understanding of Helena through her relationships with Hermia and Demetrius respectively. Kuzner allows audiences to view Helena’s relationship with Hermia as influential rather than as a rivalry where the females compete for the attention of their lovers. However, his emphasis on the stability of Helena and Hermia’s relationship highlights the unfortunate trend of deception and betrayal in Helena’s intrapersonal relationships.
Shakespeare’s choice of the name “Helena” provides one instance in which the audience should perceive the character as going against the traditional feminine grain. Heavey notes that, in using “Helena” for one of his heroines, Shakespeare expects his audience to recognize the ancient Greek character Helen of Troy, mythologized by Homer and other writers (428). This allusion deepens Helena’s character through similarities and differences of Helen’s pre-established personality and fate. Helen of Troy is a sexual agent in her relationships, whereas Helena is insecure and doubtful because she is not desired. Helen is depicted as an object to be fawned over, as she had much control over the men around her, whereas Helena is undesirable, only obtaining the attention of both male lovers after they have been put under a spell. Heavey notes the difference between Helen and Helena, arguing that Helena suffers “because she cannot believe [in love’s] effect, and instead imagines herself to be a figure of fun, particularly in comparison to Hermia” (430). While the men are under the effect of the spell, Helena’s beauty is realized; despite this opportunity, Helena remains modest, as well as confused. To contrast, Helen of Troy takes advantage of men’s infatuation with her. She is successful in her pursuit of male relations, as she believes that their desire for her is genuine, whereas Helena’s hesitance demonstrates her distrust of typical patriarchal expectations of love, which have not worked in her favor.
However, these difficulties that Helena faces in her romantic pursuits may be innate in her character’s existence. David Bevington notes that the name Helena has darker consequences that can be tied to “an old false etymology” in Helen, misinterpreted as “the Greek root hele, or ‘destroyer,’ despite the efforts of Euripides and others to defend her reputation” (112). This misperceived origin of Helen’s name creates negative connotations in the character of Helena, despite her yearning for the love of Demetrius. The misapplication of the Greek root hele in Helena’s name suggests the destruction of her own love life, or the love lives of others. Helena internalizes these unreciprocated attempts for Demetrius’s love self-destructively. She repeats patterns of renouncing her agency, placing his affection above her own worth, all for Demetrius to spurn her anyway. Her self-destructive nature manifests itself as unworthiness and wariness in her relationships. Despite Demetrius returning her feelings after the reversal of the spell, Helena believes she is unworthy of love, as she is unattractive in comparison to Hermia. She muses, “Sickness is catching; O, were favour so! / Your words I catch, fair Hermia; […] O, teach me how you look, and with what art / You sway the motion of Demetrius’ heart” (1.1.186-87; 192-93). Helena wishes that Hermia’s beautiful words and disposition were contagious, like sickness, so she can win over Demetrius. Consequently, she is confused by his sudden attraction to her and becomes wary in her pursuit of further relations, as she was only attractive while the lovers were under the spell of the fairies. Because her love for Demetrius is unreciprocated as she is unattractive to him, Helena fails to be defined by early modern norms that depict women as docile objects to be fawned over.
The fates of Helen of Troy and Helena are seemingly opposite, as Helen is forced into a miserable existence of domesticity as punishment for her infidelity, whereas Helena chooses her lover for marriage, contented with her romantic future with Demetrius. Although the contrast between the fates of Helen and Helena might encourage early-modern audiences to interpret the conclusion of Midsummer as happy, Helena’s marriage misaligns with traditional societal expectations. As Heavey states, recollecting the story of Helen of Troy might prompt early modern audiences “to reflect that seemingly intact marriages do not entirely heal old wounds, or guarantee future happiness […]. [A]ny laughter is tempered with an awareness of the dark or even tragic consequences of desire, for both men and women” (431). Helena’s name as an allusion allows for early-modern audiences to apply these darker consequences of desire to Helena’s romantic relationship with Demetrius. Although they are paired up at the end of the play, expecting marriage, this resolution does not restore the damage that has been done by Helena. She has been unrelenting in her pursuit of Demetrius, and his hatred for her and her masochistic tendencies cause unease in their relationship prior to their being romantically paired. In the ancient Greek myth of Helen of Troy, Theseus took part in the rape of Helen, “thereby introducing the theme of sexual violence” into the story of Helena, too (Bevington 112). Contextualizing Helena through Helen of Troy allows for an early-modern audience to expect malicious treatment of Helena in her relationships and in her society. Also, the females’ uncertain fates parallel each other, especially the justice of Helen’s sentence of domesticity and the question of Helena’s love for Demetrius. Helena subverts the recognizable fate of Helen of Troy, dissuading audiences from believing that the seemingly “happy ending” of forcibly pairing an unknowing Helena and Demetrius together is to be celebrated.
Moreover, the insecurity created by Helena’s resentment and envy of Hermia and Lysander’s relationship further drives Helena to pursue a relationship despite Demetrius’s indifference to her. Their relationship is unstable and one-sided in the beginning scenes of the play. Helena is committed to Demetrius, while he repeatedly rejects her. In an early scene, Helena pleads to Demetrius:
[G]ive me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
What worser place can I beg in your love
(And yet a place of high respect with me)
Than to be used as you use your dog?” (2.1.207-10)
Her insecurity is clear and seemingly self-perpetuating, reinforcing the need to feel sustained, even to her detriment. Helena approaches her romantic desire for Demetrius untraditionally, masochistically referring to herself as a dog in her pursuit of him to emphasize her devotion and desperation for love, as the love of a spaniel is unconditional despite abuse. This untraditional nature of Helena’s female sexual agency poses a challenge to patriarchal perceptions of love and sex (Sanchez 505). Sanchez correctly asserts that Helena’s sexual agency does not align with traditional and early modern contexts of love and sex, as Helena has only known unreciprocated love. Additionally, as Kuzner argues, when Helena does acquire the love of Demetrius, she categorizes his personhood as a possession. He states that Helena’s depiction of Demetrius as a jewel (4.1.190) allows Helena to fall “short of a certain standard: of [what Roland Barthes called] the ‘non-will to possess’ […], to receive [love], not to keep [it] (107). Because of her confusion while the spell directs the lovers’ attraction to her, she struggles to make sense of her relationships. She is unsure if their intentions and love for her are true, thus in her relationship with Demetrius, she needs him to belong only to her for their romance to be valid. Helena’s insecurities manifest in her resorting to animal-like comparisons to empower herself and to express the need to possess her lover once they are in a relationship, all of which reinforces her nontraditional approach to relationships.
Throughout the play Helena clearly defies perceptions of the early-modern heteronormative and patriarchal society through her realized friendship with Hermia and her convoluted relationship with Demetrius. Nevertheless, Lorraine Helms argues that Helena is a stereotypical early-modern female, one who is dependent on the love of another and lacking self-agency, confined to stereotypically domestic love and traditional perceptions of gender. In the early-modern theater, female characters were performed by young men (190). She believes that as a result of boys’ acting in the roles of women, female characters would not be as complex as their male counterpart roles. She then asserts that the “all-male acting company contrasts the boy and the mature male to create the illusion of female presence,” though, she believes, strategies that depict these boys as more traditionally feminine through poetic and narrative attempts fall short. As such, actions to feminize the boy actor may simplify or eroticize the woman who now performs the woman’s role (192). Helms argument is important because the young boys that played the women’s roles were not overtly feminine, which disallowed for the nuances of complex female characters. However, despite the lack of overt femininity being a factor in their initial creation, these traditionally “male roles” do not strip the depth of their characters. In this way, Shakespeare’s roles transcend surface level depictions dependent on the way that they are analyzed. Helena and other female characters within his works are complex in their relationships and motivations. The development of Helena and Hermia, and all their attributes, are “melded into an assemblage that reaches beyond the boundaries of the autonomous human” (Bailey 408). Their relationship transcends what females were confined to in their established patriarchy. Helena’s relationship with Demetrius is also intricate because Helena has agency in her pursuit of Demetrius, and she can communicate her desires to her lover in a period when female characters often lacked the ability to do so.Evidently, Helena is more complex than the sum of her parts, a model of how subversive a seemingly simple female role can be.
Through the Greek myth, Helen of Troy and her stubborn pursuit of Demetrius, Helena challenges stereotypical perceptions of females in an early-modern society. However, like Helms, Louis Montrose argues that Helena conforms to an early-modern patriarchy, that she is traditionally feminine due to her dependence on male affection. Helena and Hermia are both dependent on the male characters, fleeing to the woods with them to take control of their own lives. Despite each male lover resenting them, Helena and Hermia do not “fluctuate in their desires for their young men, […] the ending ratifies their constant if inexplicable preferences” (488). The early-modern society confines Helena’s character to a fate of being subservient to a male lover. These female roles reflect the male gaze, serving an androcentric society inside and outside of the play. Montrose’s argument is crucial due to how each female may have certain aspects of agency, i.e., Hermia’s decision to run away from her father’s arrangements, and the women’s inability to detach themselves from male love after they begin their pursuits. As Helms notes, the presence of the early modern patriarchy resulted in “cinematic representation [that] can often construct the female as an object of the male spectator’s gaze” (190). This “male spectator gaze” complements Montrose’s argument, as these relationships between the male and female lovers were constructed with a male audience in mind. Helena is denied power in her relationships because she was written to fawn over Demetrius incessantly and depend upon him despite his rejection of her. By contextualizing the plays through an androcentric lens, we see that the history of these theatrical events excludes women and, therefore, their gender constructs due to the male-dominated audience. Since the role of Helena was written in a context where she must conform to typical domestic roles, the complexity of her character diminishes as Demetrius is a crutch to rely on – renouncing her own self agency.
In comedies,the end goal is often intimacy and marriage, reinforcing the idea that female roles follow a trend of domesticity in early-modern Shakespearean works. Though Helena does love Demetrius by the play’s conclusion, her subversive approach to their relationship culminates in apprehension of their relationship, as Demetrius’s past animosity for her has vanished.She questions the validity of her feelings, “And I have found Demetrius, like a jewel / Mine own, and not mine own” (4.1.190-91). Despite Helena’s effort in obtaining Demetrius, she is still uncertain of the nature of their relationship. Prior to them waking up from their dreamlike state, Helena’s beauty hadn’t been enough to attract Demetrius as she could “never hope to live up to her namesake’s reputation without supernatural intervention” (Heavey 430). Compared to Helen of Troy, Helena is not confident in the love of others, relying on supernatural intervention to repair what she lacks. Helena is in control of her destiny as she chooses her love with Demetrius rather than Lysander when the fairy intervention occurs. In Midsummer’s story and early modern society, Helena changes perceptions of the contemporary woman, adding nuance to how early-modern societal structures and relationships within them can be interpreted.
To conclude, Helena is a rounded and fully realized character despite social pressures demanding her to conform to patriarchal norms of an early-modern society. Her connection with the ancient Greek figure, Helen of Troy, allows Helena to demonstrate her nonconformity regarding early-modern expectations of female characters and their relationships. Also, Helena’s relationship with Demetrius highlights the self-sabotaging nature of her personality when it comes to unreciprocated love. Helena is contextualized and transformed through her rejection of Demetrius, as his spurning begins to change Helena’s approach to all her relationships. Repeated rejections by Demetrius and the mocking nature of the love spell create insecurity in Helena, which manifests as a distrust in all future relationships. Furthermore, her insecurity with romantic relationships contradicts the understanding that Helena’s character was created with the male audience in mind, a woman who is docile, domestic, and dependent on the love of a male figure. Through her relentless pursuit of Demetrius, she is agentive in her repeated attempts at his love. While I concur with Kastan that other female characters in early-modern dramas are “victimized by the patriarchy” and attempt “to evade the rigidities of paternal will” (126), Helena is different. She subverts expectations and grapples with more complex issues, such as understanding her own wants and needs as well as the wants and needs within a relationship, rather than simply conforming to the typical familial expectation that she marries according to her father’s will. Overall, Helena’s subversion of tradition creates a compelling character to which both early-modern and modern audiences can relate. She experiences intrapersonal struggles with rejection and the agony of unrequited love, but with this unrequited love, Helena resists patriarchal expectations of love, pursuing her lover until she gets what she desires.
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