The Perfect Wife and the Evil Temptress: The Dichotomy of Penelope and Helen of Troy

Abstract

Stories about Helen of Troy and Odysseus’ wife Penelope have existed alongside each other over the centuries since Athens dominated Greek art and culture. By considering depictions of these two women in three time periods, this study will trace the way their stories have changed, and what these changes may tell us about each period’s attitude towards women. This analysis also problematizes the tropes of “the virgin” and “the whore” ro demonstrate the adverse impact of such recurring images on women today. Starting in the fifth century, Athens, I will consider Helen through three plays by Euripides, asking why Penelope is a major character in Homer’s Odyssey, but does not appear in any extant Greek tragedy. Moving to the Middle Ages in Britain, I will look at how Helen is constructed in three adaptations of Guido de Colonna's Hystoria Troiana, as well as Penelope’s letter to her husband in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis. I will also consider Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, which places these women onstage and subjects them to the male gaze. My study of these sources will attempt to discern the reasons that the character of Penelope became a well-known ideal of femininity by the late fourteenth century, while Helen was to some extent pardoned for inciting the Trojan War. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, US productions of theatrical adaptations of both of these characters have received widespread attention; but what does this mean for a feminist analysis of Helen and Persephone? To answer this question, I will use three plays that adapt the myths of Helen and Penelope; Jean Giraudoux’s Tiger at the Gates, Mark Schultz’s A Brief History of Helen of Troy, and Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad. After investigating my chosen time periods, I conclude that stories and dramas about the stereotypical whore and the idealized wife have allowed two characters constructed by men in a patriarchal culture to be re-adapted in the twenty-first century and given their own voices. These adaptations, however, continue to uphold Helen and Penelope as dichotomous figures, something that hinders their ability to function as theatrical advocates for third wave feminism.