Helen of Troy Character Analysis

Helen of Troy is the ideal of beauty in Classical Greek culture and one of the main characters in Homer’s epic poem the Iliad. In the Iliad she is kidnapped by the Trojan prince Paris, and for her husband, the Greek chieftain Menelaus, raises a great army to recover her. In Faust, however, Helen and her culture of the good, the beautiful, and the true have long since departed from the world. Faust summons the phantoms of Helen and Paris to the Emperor’s court and, though no one else present truly perceives Helen’s beauty and nobility, the magician himself does, powerfully. He at once falls in love with her, but thinks that he cannot possess her until he understands Greek culture in full, so he journeys to Greece for Classical Walpurgis Night. Faust succeeds in restoring Helen to life, but Phorkyas-Mephistopheles spiritually vexes the Greek woman such that she is, although unchanged in beauty, doubtful of herself. Perhaps this is why the marriage of Faust and Helen, of Romanticism and Classicism, ends in tragedy, the death of Faust and Helen’s son Euphorion. After Euphorion’s fall, Helen leaves the world for good to be with her son in the Underworld, a phantom once more.