Helen in Iliad
HELEN:"CAUSA BELLE and VICTIM OF WAR".
Homer creates Helen as a complex and suffering figure with a good mind, who strives for autonomy, expression, and belonging, within and despite the many constraints to which she is subject.Helen appears in only six encounters in the Iliad, with a different audience in each. As the encounters progress, she reveals more and more aspects of her personality and becomes increasingly assertive, increasingly her own person, and increasingly a part of the society in which she is an outcast. In the Iliad, as in the Odyssey, Helen is repeatedly referred to as the woman for whose sake the Trojan War was fought.But Helen is something more than that.She is depicted within a framework of multiple constraints in the Iliad.
She is a captive and possession in a world in which women are possessions.
She is subjected to the wishes of the gods in a world ruled by the gods. And she is an abhorred foreigner viewed as the cause of suffering and strife, a disadvantage she shares with no one else in the epic.
Women as Possessions
In the environment of the Iliad, women are possessions, to be bartered or fought over, but are not free agents. This does not mean that they are all literally slaves. Andromache and Hecabe are obviously not, and Helen’s formal status, like theirs, is that of a free woman and wife. Despite this, women’s existence as possessions is established in Book 1.3 Most of the book concerns two quarrels over the possession of women taken in wartime.
The first is over Chryseis, whom Agamemnon had taken in battle and initially refuses to return to her father in exchange for ransom. The second, between Agamemnon and Achilles, erupts when Agamemnon is compelled to return Chryseis and, in compensation for his loss, appropriates
Briseis from Achilles. Briseis, for her part, had been given to Achilles as a "geras", war prize, after Achilles had killed her parents. The quarrels, notably, are between men.
Homer creates Helen as a complex and suffering figure with a good mind, who strives for autonomy, expression, and belonging, within and despite the many constraints to which she is subject.Helen appears in only six encounters in the Iliad, with a different audience in each. As the encounters progress, she reveals more and more aspects of her personality and becomes increasingly assertive, increasingly her own person, and increasingly a part of the society in which she is an outcast. In the Iliad, as in the Odyssey, Helen is repeatedly referred to as the woman for whose sake the Trojan War was fought.But Helen is something more than that.She is depicted within a framework of multiple constraints in the Iliad.
She is a captive and possession in a world in which women are possessions.
She is subjected to the wishes of the gods in a world ruled by the gods. And she is an abhorred foreigner viewed as the cause of suffering and strife, a disadvantage she shares with no one else in the epic.
Women as Possessions
In the environment of the Iliad, women are possessions, to be bartered or fought over, but are not free agents. This does not mean that they are all literally slaves. Andromache and Hecabe are obviously not, and Helen’s formal status, like theirs, is that of a free woman and wife. Despite this, women’s existence as possessions is established in Book 1.3 Most of the book concerns two quarrels over the possession of women taken in wartime.
The first is over Chryseis, whom Agamemnon had taken in battle and initially refuses to return to her father in exchange for ransom. The second, between Agamemnon and Achilles, erupts when Agamemnon is compelled to return Chryseis and, in compensation for his loss, appropriates
Briseis from Achilles. Briseis, for her part, had been given to Achilles as a "geras", war prize, after Achilles had killed her parents. The quarrels, notably, are between men.