Homer’s Characters that I Struggled with Most: Helen
Entry One — Helen: Five Competing Takes and No “True” One
Every storyteller tackling the Trojan War sooner or later faces the same dilemma: which Helen to tell?
For three thousand years, audiences have argued about how Helen of Sparta became Helen of Troy. Did she leave willingly, chasing passion or freedom? Was she abducted, and if so, by whom—or by what power? Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey don’t say. In one, Helen speaks of guilt and regret; in the other, she sounds calm, even content. Perhaps that shouldn’t surprise us—the two poems were likely composed by different “Homers.”
And that silence has opened the gates to every imaginable “take” on the world’s most famous woman. When I step onstage to sing Homer, I can’t possibly deliver them all. But I can show my audience what those competing Helens reveal about the cultures—and storytellers—that invented them.
Here, then, are five of history’s favorite Helens.
1. Helen the Homewrecker
In this version, Helen had everything a Bronze Age woman could hope for: a kingly husband, luxury, and a child. Then a handsome foreign prince arrived, and she bolted for Troy. This take flourished in classical Greece, a culture deeply anxious about female sexuality.
The moral was simple: “Menelaus looked away for a moment, and his wife caused a ten-year war. So take care, gentlemen, and guard your women.”
Misogynistic, yes—but the story still lingers in modern retellings, where Helen is blamed for everything from adultery to Armageddon.
2. Helen the Damsel in Distress
Every age loves a fairy tale. In this one, Helen is a helpless princess abducted by an evil prince while her noble husband vows to rescue her. It’s tidy, comforting, and narratively efficient. Ancient audiences knew better, of course—but “rescue the princess” is perfect wartime propaganda. Agamemnon likely never believed the damsel story, but he understood how such tales can rally an army.
3. Helen the Temptress
If you prefer your myth with a dash of original sin, meet Temptress Helen. Here, Paris is innocent until Helen ensnares him. It’s an ancient and durable trope: woman as seducer, man as victim. Trade the apple of Eris for the apple of Eden, swap Paris for Adam, and you’ve got the same Bronze-Age plot. Humanity falls; blame the woman.
4. Helen the Emancipated Woman
This one’s modern—and, for obvious reasons, a crowd favorite. Helen of Sparta is brilliant, bored, and suffocating in a patriarchal marriage. When Paris arrives, she quickly realizes he’s vain, shallow, and probably insufferable—but also a prince in a far more progressive city.
“Could this fool be my ticket out?” Helen calculates. “Troy—the city where women are treated like people, not property!”
So she orchestrates her own escape, manipulating Paris into believing he’s the seducer. Depending on the storyteller, it’s either a romance or a clever act of self-liberation. Either way, Helen reclaims her agency.
5. Helen the Pawn of Gods and Men
This is the bleakest take of all. In it, Helen is not an actor but an instrument—first of gods, then of kings. When the goddess Aphrodite promises Paris the love (read: lust) of the world’s most beautiful woman, she compels Helen’s desire with divine magic. From that moment, Helen is enslaved by passion not her own. Later, the men rewrite her again: temptress, victim, feminist icon, propaganda tool—whatever version serves their cause. Helen’s beauty becomes a blank page onto which every age projects its own fantasies and fears.
How I Tell Helen in The Full Disclosure Iliad
So, which Helen do I tell? That’s the question every modern bard must answer. The homewrecker and temptress versions always draw cheers and boos in equal measure; the damsel in distress pleases traditionalists; the emancipated Helen delights twenty-first-century audiences; the pawn comes closest to Homer’s own, bleak realism.
I could pick one and preach it. But the truth—and the beauty—of Homer’s tradition is that every one of these Helens exists simultaneously. The ancient bards didn’t need a single canonized truth; they lived in a storytelling culture where contradiction was expected, even celebrated.
In my book, I make my narrative choices—because I must—but I don’t hide them. I’ll tell one version of Helen’s story, nuanced by the others, and then, in my Jeff’s Notes, I’ll fully disclose the alternate takes that I set aside.
Why? Because part of my mission as a twenty-first-century Homeric bard is to pull back the curtain—to show readers how myth was made, remade, and fought over for three millennia.
So yes, my Helen sails for Troy—but her reasons remain layered, contradictory, and very human. Which, perhaps, is the most honest version of all.
Every age rewrites Helen—and every bard must decide which Helen to sing.