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INTRODUCTION
The prominence of Helen's self-blame in the Iliad has sparked a centuries-long inquiry into her agency and the poem's stance on the causes of the Trojan War. Notable readings depict Helen as seductive, manipulative, and responsible for the war and its disastrous effects. Such interpretations often overlook Helen's status as an abducted woman who lives in a war zone. My reading takes these elements into account and interprets the Iliadic Helen as traumatized, complicating interpretations of her character as manipulative or sexually motivated.
Modern psychological studies can help us understand the various mental states represented in Homeric epic. Important efforts in this vein include the clinical psychologist Jonathan Shay's two books on the Homeric poems and combat trauma (1994 and 2002) and Joel Christensen's The Many-Minded Man: The "Odyssey," Psychology, and the Therapy of Epic (2020), which analyzes the Odyssey in relation to numerous psychological phenomena. While such approaches have proved fruitful, analyses of war trauma within the Homeric epics typically focus on men's experiences in combat and on overseas military expeditions. Homeric women also face potentially traumatizing experiences in war: Kathy Gaca (2015) demonstrates the predominance of rape and sexual assault as martial tactics in Iliadic warfare (see also Vikman 2005.24–26). Psychological studies on trauma following sexual assault can move us closer to acknowledging and understanding the traumatizing wartime experiences of female characters in the Homeric poems.
This paper will focus on Helen's post-abduction experiences in Troy. I begin by establishing a conceptual framework informed by psychological research on trauma. These studies will guide my discussion of the three speeches in the Iliad in which Helen blames herself for the Trojan War and fantasizes about having died before she came to Troy: she speaks to Priam on the walls of Troy in Iliad 3 (171–244) and participates in sequences of persuasive speech and lamentation alongside Hecuba and Andromache in Iliad 6 (343–68) and 24 (761–75). In these speeches, Helen expresses self-blame and suicidal ideation, responses that cohere with the effects of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and continuous traumatic stress (CTS). These elements combine to build a consistent image of the Iliadic Helen as traumatized by her experiences during the Trojan War. Before turning to Helen's speeches, I argue that her interaction with...