Midsummer Night's End Helena Quotes

Helena is the main character in the play. The daughter of a recently deceased physician and therefore both low-born and poor, she is under the protection of the countess of Rossillion. That is, as a member of the countess's court, she has her material needs taken care of and has probably received some courtly education. Helena's character thus draws much from the countess's courtly values. But Helena also contributes to the play a miraculous cure and demands a fairy-tale marriage as her reward. Moreover, she persists until she is accepted as Bertram's wife; as Helena says of herself from the beginning, "my intents are fix'd, and will not leave me" (I.i.229). This persistence has sometimes been read as controlling and hard-headed. But Helena
also represents a stubborn attachment to a set of ideals that no other character in the play exhibits.
Helena makes most of the play's action happen.
After Bertram leaves in the first scene, she declares her love for him in a soliloquy (which is accidentally overheard by Rinaldo, the countess's steward), then holds her own when Parolles baits her about her virginity. She resolves to follow Bertram to the king's court to "show her merit" (I.i.227) by curing the king. When the countess discovers her intentions, Helena expresses proper embarrassment and says she knows her birth is too lowly for her to expect Bertram for a husband. But though she is quick to be frank with the countess about her intention to go to Paris, she does not reveal the larger plan: her own request to receive, as the reward for curing the king, her choice of his lords in marriage. The fact that Helena carries out this plot completely independent of any other influences and regardless of anyone else's desires makes her a highly unconventional comic or romantic
heroine.
Helena's character is not only defined by simple persistence, though. She carries out what she intends to do and what she says she will do throughout the play. She makes her words match her deeds. When she offers to cure the king, she employs a combination of modesty and insistence similar to that in her interaction with the countess. The king refuses her help almost immediately; she says she will go, but then she says, "What I can do can do no hurt to try" (II.i.134). She swears on her own virginity ("my maiden's name" [II.i.172]) and even her life that her cure will work. The king finally agrees, and agrees further to reward her with a husband.
Helena, of course, chooses Bertram. In the face of Bertram's refusal of her, Helena continues to make words and deeds match—this time, those of her husband. He writes to her that he will never accept her as his wife until she gets the ring off his finger that never will come off and becomes pregnant with his child after he vows never to sleep with her. She takes his impossible task literally, setting out to get the ring and to sleep with him even though he refuses. She also continues to express a quite openly sexual desire for him. Here again, though, her humble and modest persona mask an ability to ask for—and ultimately, to receive—what she wants. As a bride, she is for the most part submissive, but she asks Bertram directly for a physical token of love, a kiss (II.v.86). And after they have actually made love, she remarks on the strangeness of being embraced as another woman (Diana, who Bertram thinks he's making love to) but also recalls Bertram's "sweet use" and "play" in bed (IV.iv.21-25).
Helena's most elaborate plotting is required for the so-called "bed-trick." When Bertram vows never to return home as long as Helena is there, she decides to leave Rossillion—"I will be gone.
/ My being here it is that holds thee hence" (III.ii.122-23). Helena goes on pilgrimage, and again the very humility of her pose allows her to take control of her situation. She meets a Florentine widow and her daughter, Diana; and without revealing her identity at first, encourages their sympathy for the plight of the young Bertram's wife, whom he has left behind. Bertram then woos Diana, who gets his ring off his finger and then arranges to meet him at night. Helena meets him instead. She then promulgates the rumor of her own death, so that Bertram will think it safe to go home. The three women travel to Rossillion, where, in a climactic final scene, they reveal Bertram's broken vows, Diana's "cozening," and Helena's bed-trick. Helena's pretended death is yet another example of her ability to take control by suppressing or humbling herself. Her appearance in the final scene causes great drama. She calls herself "but the shadow of a wife" (V.iii.307), prompting Bertram's plea for her pardon and promise to love her ever
dearly.
The character of Helena is at the center of the play. But it is unconventional to have a woman heroine who controls all the action, and Helena does so by contradictory means: she is at once quite deliberate and gentlewomanly and humble as well. Although she gets what she wants in the end, the rapidity with which Bertram has made and broken promises, especially in the last scene, call into question the value of his promises to her. The king barely retains control of the court scene, and Helena herself does not speak much after her appearance. Moreover, the same action that began the central conflict is about to be repeated: the king offers Diana to choose a husband from among his lords as well.