Helen is a short poem written by Hilda Doolittle, better known as H.D. that was first published in 1952. H.D. used imagery, allusion, metaphor, symbolism, and allegory to relate this poem with the Greek mythological figure of Helen also mentioned in Homer’s Illiad while the main motive of the poem is to highlights the gender prejudice in the social setup that has been observed since the times of the Trojan war and the current times. The other literary work that H.D. related through this poem is To Helen by Edgar Allen Poe which was published in 1845. In the poem, Poe describes a woman known to him as beautiful as Helen of Troy.
Hilda Doolittle used her deep knowledge of Greek mythology and imagery in raising the issue of objectification of women and misogyny.
Helen was the daughter of the god Zeus and the goddess Nemesis. She was the most beautiful girl in Sparta whom everyone praised and desired. However, nobody ever considered her as an independent individual and she was objectified as a beautiful artifact, an object of desire. She was forcibly married to King Menelaus of Sparta, the younger brother of King Agamemnon of Mycenae. While she was not at all happy in this troublesome relationship, she fell in love with Prince Priam of Troy and ran away to Troy with him. This resulted in a war that was fought for more than 10 years. Helen obviously was vilified and she became the object of hatred for Greeks. The poem stresses that lust and desire objectify women and so does hatred. Edgar Allen Poe wrote To Helen while praising a woman who recently died. In this poem too, he explains how beautiful and effective she was. While Hilda took the Greek mythological elements in her poem as imagery, she related this poem to Poe’s ‘To Helen’ by mimicking the tone, variations, and metrical structure. By doing so, she criticizes these precedents and offers a full focus on Helen as an individual, free woman, rather than focusing on those who objectified her. Thus, Hilda Doolittle presented the story of Helen of troy and its gender implications through this poem.
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