Helen of Troy has been established as a primal whore, a deceiver – in a long line of sexually powerful women whose purpose is credited as being to bring down men, whose sex life is viewed as betrayal in pursuit of furtherment, perpetuating the ancient notion that female lust pollutes male intellect. To use the words of Jeffrey Toobin: ‘As is demonstrated by the history of scandal from Helen of Troy to Monica of Beverly Hills, sex has a way of befogging the higher intellectual faculties.’
Monday, August 20, 2018
and of course Eve ...
Sex, Helen of Troy and women in history and sex ...
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Hardly just the male intellect suffers from the fogging. A look in the newspapers or often enough around one's circle of acquaintance should demonstrate that.
ReplyDeleteAnd Homer, I recall, treats Helen with a good deal of respect. It has been a while since I read the Iliad, but I recall Helen as suffering a degree of self-contempt for fascination with Paris. And in the Odyssey (also a while), she looks back on her stay in Troy as an episode of madness.
It is true that Virgil has much harder words for her.
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