Reading The Odyssey and then the derivative work by Atwood made me dwell on Helen. Why is she the only female character immune from retribution in The Odyssey? Why does Menelaus take her back? How are they happy? In The Odyssey’s diegesis, a man’s honor is prized above wealth. The Odyssey is an epic about honor. And the text browbeats the reader with the idea that Penelope’s faithfulness is an integral aspect of her husband’s honor. Unfaithful women in The Odyssey fare badly. Except for Helen. How can the rules of this world not extend to Helen and Menelaus? The only answer I can think of is that if Penelope is a stock or flat character, Helen is even less. Barely a character, Helen is the embodiment of the spoils of war, a prized object.
In Book 4, Menelaus characterizes his sister-in-law, Clytemnestra as “a scheming wife” and a murderess to his guests, Telemachus and Pisistratus. Moments later, Helen arrives “like Artemis, who carries golden arrows./Adraste set a special chair for her. Alcippe spread upon it soft wool blankets,/and Phylo brought a silver sewing basket” (156). In this way, the reader sees that Helen has retained her position in Menelaus’ household. He addresses her as “wife” and gives her leave to talk about Odysseus’ exploits at Troy. This scene leaves the reader incredulous except if the reader is to infer that to Menelaus Helen is a prize reclaimed.
Atwood’s Penelopiad reinforces the idea of Helen as object in describing her as so beautiful as to be intolerable and as the woman Odysseus wanted for his wife—”like every other man on earth he’d desperately wanted to win her. Now he was competing for what was at best only second prize.” Again, there is that idea that Helen is not to be wooed but won. Atwood’s Helen is not a kind person and does not engender affection in the reader, but it is clear she is also a pawn.
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I am not sure if we are supposed to be reacting to our readings analytically, but my reaction to Sharpe’s “The Wake” is mostly reflective. Sharpe succinctly named a feeling that has been nagging at me in my rereading of The Odyssey; namely, that while humanity moves through time and fancies itself the wiser for experience, in truth, it revisits the same issues again and again. Sharpe categorizes it as the “wake of the unfinished process of emancipation.” From a home with holes in the ceiling and water-stained floors to the financial security that comes of being a tenured professor, Sharpe still feels the unease of precarity, that living in the wake. Her writing makes me well aware of my privilege in the way Toni Morrison’s Beloved did. And I am aware that I cannot begin to know the depth of that fear merely by reading about it. And I don’t know what to do about that.
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Derek Walcott’s Omeros was the most difficult of the texts for me, though I admire its form. The tercet demands lyricism and, so, more than any other of the text suggests what it might have been like to have “listened” to The Odyssey as its creators intended. In my reading I again tended to fixate on mentions of Helen, noticing in this text that, as Penelope did in The Penelopiad, the narrator lays blame on Helen: “‘There’s our trouble,’ Maud muttered into her glass. . . . “the girl lies so much, and she stole. What’ll happen to her life?'” (29). The “ebony girl in her yellow dress” suggests gold, gilt, treasure. Again, more prize than person.
Your reflection really opened my eyes to the fact that Helen actually wasn’t punished for what may otherwise be seen as “dishonorable” behavior. I hadn’t thought about the fact that “the rules of this world [did] not extend to Helen and Menelaus.” I totally agree with your proposed answer to this question, but I think that something else that may play into Menelaus’ treatment of Helen is choice. We may have spoken about this in class (I don’t clearly recall), but it seemed as though it wasn’t very clear if Helen made the choice to leave her husband or if she was abducted. Even when I looked it up on Google some sites described the events surrounding Helen’s departure from Sparta as her “fleeing to Troy with Paris”, while others describe it as a “kidnapping” or “abduction.” I think that if there was a lack of choice in leaving, then maybe this could have affected Menelaus’ feelings toward her.
I think it is interesting how you emphasized the character Helen from the “Penelopiad.” The way that Penelope characterizes her in the “Penelopiad” is almost envious, could it be because Atwood wanted Helen to represent the model of how all women were supposed be and appear in that time period? Helen, as you have mentioned, is meant to be a “prize.” That ideology has been associated within patriarchal systems throughout time and it appears as though Homer has just continued to allude upon it. Women throughout history, or shall I say women as “objects of attraction,” have been viewed not as humans but as prizes to be obtained. The most attractive woman goes to the man who is the most attractive, has the most money, or works the hardest. Such comes in the modern idea of the “trophy wife.” It appears from your analysis that Helen is no more than the ancient representation of a “trophy wife.” I enjoy the parallel between Helen and that of our presidents wife, Melania Trump…Interesting.