Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

In Greek mythology, Helen was the most beautiful woman in the world. Birthed from an “swan-egg” (Line 79)—produced after Zeus disguised himself as a bird and impregnated her mother—Helen is associated with great beauty, betrayal, and shame. Helen’s great beauty supposedly caused the Trojan war (See: Contextual Analysis). Atwood takes the mythical figure of Helen and places her in a contemporary strip club. Atwood’s Helen confesses how she feels about her objectification by others and tries to empower herself by remembering her connection to divinity.

In mythology, Helen is judged by Trojans and Greeks alike, after she is abducted by Paris and taken to Troy. In the contemporary setting, there are also “women / who’d tell [her, she] should be ashamed of [her]self” (Lines 1-2). These individuals want Helen to feel guilty for her performances and her beauty. Helen imagines they want her to “Get some self-respect / and a day job” (Line 4-5). Although this seems a more respectable alternative, Helen believes earning only “minimum wage” (Line 6) for “standing / in one place for eight hours” (Line 6-7) is still being “[e]xploited” (Line 17). Helen feels she at least has a “choice of how” (Line 18) exploitation is going to happen, and choosing pragmatism, makes more money “dancing” (Line 3). Helen justifies her “choice” (Line 18) of employment by taking pride in using her beauty to barter in dreams and power. She notes that it takes “talent / to peddle a thing so nebulous / and without material form” (Lines 14-16).

She insists, “I do give value” (Line 20) and explains her ability to give the male clientele of the club what they want. Like a “preacher” (Line 21), she can advocate a “vision” (Line 21) of otherworldly perfection. Like an advertisement, she can offer “desire or its facsimile” (Line 22). In this way, she can fulfill their fantasies of being powerful. This keeps the contemporary Helen in line with her mythic counterpart, who is blamed for Paris’s decision to kidnap her, as well as Menelaus’s decision to declare war. Both see Helen as an object to be owned. Contemporary Helen notes that to be successful at “sell[ing]. . .desire” (Lines 21-22), one must be aware of “the timing” (Line 24) as in “jokes and war” (Line 24). Helen retains knowledge of her life in “Troy” as well as her current location, so when she says, “timing” (Line 24) is a key component in “war” (Line 24), she speaks as an authority to what human nature has been like for eons. Power and desire are linked, and women are often objectified, which makes Helen’s continuing monologue a complicated feminist reaction to the way she is perceived.

Helen is aware that her beauty creates emotional chaos in those clients watching her. She notes it makes them suspect “everything’s for sale, / and piecemeal” (Line 27), meaning what they “desire” (Line 22) is both attainable to anyone and arbitrary. It does not make them special, provide security, or assure their power. Helen’s beauty becomes a reminder of all they have lost or will lose: Money, youth, position, and eventually, life. There is no real ownership. Their idea of possessing “thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple” (Line 29) is “murder[ed],” (Line 28) which causes “hatred” (Line 31) in these “beery worshippers” (Line 32). If they are not depressed or angered by the reminder of their fleeting possibilities, they instead fall into “a bleary / hopeless love” (Line 32-33) with Helen’s beauty. The clientele have either “upturned eyes, imploring” (Lines 33-34) or are “ready to snap at [her] ankles” (Line 35). Helen suggests that women are continuously seen in this dual way. This corresponds to the reputation of Helen after she returned to Troy. She was either regarded as a dangerous seductress who led men to battle, or was worshipped as a demi-goddess, associated with love.

Interestingly, Helen, at first, “keep[s] the beat and dance[s] for them because / they can’t” (Lines 38-39). Sympathetic to their struggle, she “understand[s] floods and earthquakes, and the urge / to step on ants” (Lines 36-37). The universe is a vast, bleak place, she knows, as she relays symbolic descriptions of the different “music” (Line 39) that functions both as the soundtrack of her routine but also, life at large. This music “smells like foxes” (39), is “crisp as heated metal” (line 40), or “humid as August” (Line 42). This tension culminates in the description of the music resembling the “looted city the day after” the “rape” (Line 44) and “killing” (Line 45), when the “survivors” (Line 46) face “bleak exhaustion” (Line 48). Here, in a post-war landscape that recalls the destruction of Troy, Helen seems to acknowledge that it is the pain of the human condition that causes the men’s longings for worship or destruction.

However, she is too filled with her own “exhaustion” (line 48) to excuse them. “[S]miling tires [her] out the most” (Line 49) and “the pretence/ that I can’t hear” (Lines 51-52) their “warty gutturals” (Line 55). She notes she is “a foreigner to them” (Line 54) and thus, they assume they have the right to objectify her. Helen correlates her audience with the Trojans and reminds us that she, instead, “come[s] from the province of the gods” (Line 57). Reasserting her own narrative, she reminds clients who “lean close” (Line 60) that her “mother was raped by a holy swan” (Line 61). Besides being a reference to the story of her parents, this solidifies both Helen’s divine stature and her understanding of the potential for toxic masculinity from even the most civilized in her audience. She uses it to manipulate “all the husbands” (Line 63), assuring them they are not like the regulars who populate the club, while implying that this is exactly what they are. She takes exception to those who would define her body for themselves.

Enacting her power to tell her own story, Helen confidently moves into her “blazing swan-egg of light” (Line 79) and rises to “hover six inches in the air” (Line 78) above the “countertop.” This reference to the “swan-egg” (Line 79) refers both to the club’s spotlight as well as the moment of Helen’s mythical birth and the subsequent debate whether she was immortal or immortal. For all those who doubt she is “a goddess” (Line 80)—including the “women who’d tell [her] to be ashamed” (Line 2), the men who would “reduce” her to parts (Line 68), the “dangerous birds” (Line 64) who disguise themselves as “husbands” (Line 64)—she throws down a challenge. “Try me” (line 81), she dares. She admits that the monologue she has been giving is a “torch song” (Line 82), a sentimental lament of unrequited love. But Helen subverts the image of this “song” and turns it to a threat. “Touch me, and you’ll burn” (Line 83), she says to anyone trying to “wall [her] up alive / in [her] own body” (Line 71-72). If anyone tries to own her, she warns, they will be reduced to ash. By giving modern Helens their own voices, Atwood enlarges definitions of what acceptable power is for a woman based on the myths western culture has inherited.