The Character of Helena in Alls Well that Ends Well :: Alls Well That Ends Well Essays

The Character of Helena in altogethers Well that Ends Well Helena thither is an underlying ambiguity in Helena s character. Spreading the illustration everyplace the four most disputed moments in Alls Well, the virginity repartee, the miraculous cure of the King, the attainment of conditions and the bed - trick, one can detect the unlike shades of in her character - honourable, passionate, discreet, audacious, romantic, rational, tenacious, absolvitory ... She can be sampled out to be basically an idiosyncratic somebody with her good and bad, positioned within the clever wench tradition and the fulfilling of tasks folk tales ( W. W. Lawrence ) which necessitates that she should behave with a determination. The undivided ambiguity in Helena ensues from unrealistic dramaturgy and realistic liking of women. Throughout the play, one sees Helena jostling ingenuousness with sexuality and at times there seems to be two Helenas, one who is conventionally work and the other who is ac tively all out ... a love - frame Juliet that is ready at the end to expose her darling s ill practices. i could compare Helena with Isabella in Measure for Measure, since the characters are engulfed by different circumstances that demand each of them to act differently. Isabella is a religious foreshadow while Helena is only love-driven. Helen ... virtue in action ? All other characters contribute to the promotion of Helena as a perfect(a) character and though in Act. II Sc. v Bertram addresses her with here comes my clog he does non diminish her already cultivated uprightness which forgoes inherited wealth and nobility. The Countess is convince that she has a noble virtue that her son cannot achieve through his valor in war. Her virtues were assigned to her by her father and by Heaven to whose disturbance she ascribes all her ability to cure the King. Somehow, she is that semi-divine person or some lawsuit of new saint in fighting for what is genuine and lawful and per sonifies virtue in action. This Christ projection with which W. Knights endows her could have been further sustained by present that it is rooted in what Lefaw imagines in Act II Sc. iii - They say miracles are past and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar, things eldritch and causeless. Hence it is that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.