In her own era, and for centuries after, there were Helenic cults and Helenic shrines in Sparta and all over the Mediterranean. Hughes delves into the past to show something of the Spartan way of life as lived by women then. Bold eyed and beautiful, athletic and free, Spartan women were unashamed of their bodies or their sexuality. They seem also to have been important members of their community to judge by the number of statues and paintings showing them in charge of priestly rites and perhaps of the storing and distribution of crops, an important responsibility in an agricultural society. These functions can be traced back to 25,000 years BC: women were a life force, associated with sex and fecundity, with giving life and taking it, responsible for keeping the Earth and the land fecund and productive. Helen herself is often represented holding a pomegranate and a wheat ear, symbolic of the sacred feminine.

In Homer, Helen is the most beautiful woman in the world, the world’s desire. As a child, she was abducted by Theseus and raped, then freed by her brothers. Later she married the Mycenean Menelaus. Later still she went to Troy with Paris. Paris dead, she took up with one of his brothers. But no matter how colourful her life had been, she was always desired because after everything, Menelaus took her back.

It is unclear whether she was abducted by Paris, or whether she went willingly – it all depends on who is telling the story, for there are many accounts of the events at Troy. What varies down through the ages is the amount of blame to be apportioned Helen. In Sparta, she is the epitome of womanhood – no Spartan bride married without an offering to divinely erotic Helen. Egyptian writings portray her as the placid perfect wife (some sources even claim she never went to Troy but settled in Egypt). Classical Athenians condemn her as the worst kind of woman and the cause of the deaths of all the heroes, a judgement hardly to be wondered at in that misogynistic society where women were to be chaste, modest, and above all unseen and not heard.

The harshest condemnations come form the Christian era. That fiercely misogynistic culture which blamed Eve for all the troubles of the world was hardly likely to spare pagan Helen. Helen’s sexuality was troubling for a culture which provided the Virgin Mary as a template for women. It was Helen’s lusts which spawned the Trojan war and the destruction of men (not Paris’s or Menelaus’s), just as it was Eve’s disobedience and not Adam’s which brought about the expulsion from Eden. And yet they cannot leave Helen alone. Hughes points out that in their condemnations of Helen, an underlying yearning can be traced in their lingering descriptions of her appearance and their harping on about her lusts. She’s not called the world’s desire for nothing.

One of the most enjoyable features of this book is the juxtaposition of all these judgements and opinions with historical fact. A brief foray into the writings of the Hittite empire (of which Troy was a client city) show an edgy international situation between power hungry Mycenaeans and Hittites holding on to what they had, a scenario not unfamiliar today. Perhaps Helen was a necessary excuse, a Bronze age Weapon of Mass Destruction. Hughes recalls meeting a New York taxi driver who found a woman to blame for Iraq. His contemporary Helen is Ms Lewinski, whose fault it is that Clinton fell and allowed Bush into power. QED. It’s a funny anecdote, and not a million miles away from judgements of Helen, the Spartan Queen.

Also enjoyable is the assembling of art and statuary and literature from many eras and cultures, showing the changing face of Helen of Troy. From the bold eyed girls of Sparta and Minoan culture, to the fiendish Athenian theatrical face mask, to Helen condemned to burn in hell, to the milkwater Victorian Helen peering vainly into a mirror, Helen always reflects male judgements and fantasies. Hughes sees her faceless in the semi dark of her palace, moving silently, glistening with olive oil scented with roses, her earrings jangling, unknown and unknowable, but endlessly fascinating. I like that version too.

Marion Arnott lives in Paisley, Scotland. She was winner of the Phillip Good Memorial Prize For Women's Fiction 1998, CWA Short Dagger 2001 and shortlisted for CWA Short Dagger 2002. Work has appeared in Scottish Child, West Coast, Solander Magazine, Peninsula , QWF, Hayakawa Mystery Magazine (Japan), Books Ireland, Northwords, Chapman, Crimewave, and Datlow and Winding's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror volume 15. Her short story collection 'Sleepwalkers,' was published in August, 2003 by Elastic Press. To visit Marion's Showcase on this website, click here

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.