Category: literature

The Rape of Bertram: Helena’s Paradox

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One of the interesting things about Shakespeare’s play All’s Well That Ends Well is the paradoxical plight of Bertram. For all intents and purposes, he just wants to have a little fun as a young man. He is dealt a weird hand of cards, though. When the king personally commands him to marry a woman obsessed with him, we can understand his unhappiness. Anyways, he feels how he feels, and he flees. 

What else could he have done? Staying to marry the woman his mother and the king want him to would put him in the position to become resentful to them all. Running away only bought him some time to catch his breath, and he turned that time into an opportunity to seduce a virgin. The moral ambiguity of this play is so perfectly balanced it is equally easy or difficult to take either Helena’s or Bertram’s side.

Bertram is after all, the subject of a female gaze, a victim of sexually motivated exploitation. Laura Mulvey wrote about the male gaze in the context of art history and that has become a very influential way of analyzing paintings and representations of women. In this play, however, Shakespeare gives us a portrait of a woman who is actively objectifying and fantasizing about a man. She goes beyond representation or fantasy, however, and coordinates sex with the object of her desire. Ironically, Bertram has the energy of a rapist, but he is the one who ends up being sexually violated.

Bertram thinks that he is giving the business to the virgin Diana but he’s really having sex with Helena. The scene immediately following their sexual encounter shows us a disturbing portrait of a woman who has trapped her husband into impregnating her. She rapes Bertram by tricking him into having sex with her, and when it is over, she reflects on how easily he was fooled. She thinks about how hot blooded and crazed he was in the moment and how he didn’t even realize he wasn’t having sex with Diana.

Clearly, there’s something super creepy about Helena. She also spies on people throughout the play, pretending to be someone else. When she gets to Italy, Bertram is already famous for being brave during a battle and when she is hearing the story about him and how he had left France because he was forced into a marriage, she says she knows the woman. 

Helena is an undercover agent, and we see her making her moves with unrelenting will. Helena is more than a stage five clinger; she’s obsessed. She chose Bertram, researched his background, used political leverage to entrap him in marriage, stole his mother’s loyalty and tricked him into sex. If the genders were reversed, this would be the portrait of an absolute psycho. Because she is raping her husband and stopping a man from taking advantage of a virgin, the morality of her actions is ambiguous.

Helena also uses Bertram to climb the social ladder of her times. She is the daughter of a physician. He was a famous doctor but still inferior in social class. Bertram belongs to the ruling class. As a nobleman, he feels entitled to certain rights and he regards most categories of people as socially inferior. Helena’s path of upward mobility uses Bertram like a mule.

Bertram is what Al Bundy would later embody in US American television, the defeated alpha. This play shows what Al would have been like at the peak of his football career before being conquered by Peg. Because Bertram is young and physically attractive, he wants to take advantage of his time, but he is too stupid and ultimately is outwitted by the sex-hungry and power-savvy Helena.

Part of what keeps the scales balanced in this play is the general creepiness of Bertram and his partner in sexual adventuring, Parolles. Parolles has a way with words and talks women into having sex with him. He gives arguments against virginity, saying that being a virgin is an insult to a woman’s mother. Bertram and Parolles would have a podcast and would live in a content house, today. Just a couple of hounds trying to get laid, they are famous for their philandering ways.

There are two different worlds colliding in the play. There’s the happy go get lucky world of the soldier bachelors and there’s the world of family and the court. Bertram and Parolles flee the court to indulge in sexual adventures. Helena, deprived of the ability to flee, uses the political structure of the court to conquer the object of her sexual desire. Ultimately, Helena gets what she wants. She is the hero, or more successful antihero of the play. For her, the ends justify the means. Her dishonesty, her political climbing, her sexual deception, and her obsession with a handsome man somehow balance out in a world full of inequality and fuck bois.

Team Helena

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In our asinine social media Internet troll phase of US American culture, 2016-20, the character Parolles would have been the hero of Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. Bertram would’ve been an influencer, hype beast, even though he’s almost as smart as a bag of muddy rocks. It was a bleak but necessary phase of growth, our terrible twos of a digitally connected world. We celebrated snitches, nerds, and creeps.

Not anymore. Not since Joe Rogan got his Spotify deal. 

Ultimately, Trump will have been less influential than Rogan, and that is just something you are going to have to consider if you want to be taken seriously as a thinker. Influence is influence. 

Shakespeare is the strongest brand in English Literature. He’s the Disney of the stage. Nobody even comes close. That’s one reason why studying Shakespeare makes so much sense right now. We are slowly globalizing as a culture and that means a cultural transformation that will change things in a way that feels threatening to some and promising to others. Superhero movies have dominated this period for this reason. We need a common language to speak, a mythical language.

We have evolved from a culture best defined by Disney, to one described in spirit by comic book characters. Can you see how young we are as a culture? The next logical step, as happens with any 9th grader in this country I believe, is to start reading Shakespeare. That’s the next level above comic books for us, for some reason. It’s not so much a hierarchy, however, as much as a process of maturation that entails the development of certain strengths or capabilities. 

When we are young, we require the entertaining quality of cartoons. When we get a little older, we can read books with pictures. Eventually, we can read sophisticated plays and derive value and meaning from the text. Does that mean that reading Shakespeare is better than watching Looney Tunes? Not exactly. It just indicates a more mature and sophisticated ability to consume culture. It’s still just consuming culture.

The most important part of consuming culture is the dialogue that it provokes. Reading Shakespeare can lead to more relevant and interesting conversations about things that matter to today’s context without directly discussing topical news. 

Bertram is a bro. He’s too young to be noble. He’s suffering from testosterone poisoning and that is no excuse for his rapist mentality, his narcissistic abandoning of family and country. It’s just an explanation for why he is such a kook. He probably would never become someone cool, but surely, he could not remain this stupid forever. Once he realizes that his own sexual appetite is less important than being good to the people in his life, then he might simmer down a little bit. Not in the play, though. He’s cool as a grease fire. He’s suffering from mental illness, a combination of grief for his father’s death, of a repulsion of being controlled, and of a manic desire to kill enemies in battle and to have sex with virgins as a reward. Bertram is a head case.

He’s also a loser. Despite all the actions he takes, he still ends up a victim of fate, made to do what other people tell him to do. Bertram is a submissive male. Bertram is beta. His aggression on the battlefield and in the bedroom derive from his knowledge that he has no control over his own life. Thankfully, Bertram is so stupid that he never really hurts anyone. The virgin he is trying to sleep with tricks him into having sex with his own wife. His best friend betrays him. Slowly, Bertram realizes how stupid he has been, what poor judgment he has shown.

This is a painful awakening during a comedy. 

Reading Shakespeare, listening to the characters, and thinking about how their plots relate to our lives today is a good way to engage in debate without devolving into fighting. At least, I hope it could. Who knows, though. It might end up as a shouting match between Team Helena and Team Bertram.

Bertram’s Betrayals: Rape Culture in All’s Well That Ends Well

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All’s Well That Ends Well is a play of transgressions. The character Bertram takes the quickest fall from grace imaginable shortly after the passing of his father. He is the ultimate fuck boi. Bertram is a victim of circumstance, but he refuses to be limited by other people’s plans for him to the extent that he betrays his widowed mother and his king. Why does he sacrifice all his social bonds? For some action with the ladies, Bertram burns all his bridges.

Why is Bertram such an unlikable character? He loses his father and grieves and consoles his mother. That gives us an opening for empathy from the introduction, but Bertram quickly shows that he is uninterested in anything other than pursuing the freedoms of youth. He is not out of the shadow of his father’s passing when he is married to a woman he doesn’t choose and these compounding forces of unfreedom are too big of a challenge for him to face, so he flees the country with his friend, Parolles.

Running away could seem to be cowardly, but Bertram flees to Italy to fight in a war which requires physical courage. He manages to perform some important service in the battle and is enjoying a moment of fame. For Bertram, the war offered an escape and a stage for him to show his value and to attract sexual companions. While he has gained some notoriety, the woman he is interested in has no interest in him. When Helena arrives to Italy, she meets this woman, and they conspire to trick Bertram.

Bertram’s energy toward the young Italian woman Diana is nothing short of predatory. The women come together to defend Diana against Bertram’s sexual advances. The reason we dislike Bertram so much it turns out is because he has the mind of a rapist. He can be forgiven for not wanting to marry a woman he didn’t choose, but when he attempts to coerce a woman who doesn’t want him, he becomes a villain. She is a task to him, something he considers part of the business of war. Having done something heroic he feels entitled to sexual rewards.

Betram’s sexual desperation is made obvious when Diana manages to get him to give her his ring. Like a simp, he’s fooled by their trick. Helena has paid Diana’s mother to have her attempt this move, and Bertram is so driven to have sex with Diana that he falls right into their trap. Driven by libido to the point that he is willing to give up his most prized heirloom to a stranger, we see how out of control Bertram really is.

When Helena and Diana switch places, Bertram ends up inadvertently planting his seed in his lawful wife. He is tricked into becoming a father. He thinks he is fulfilling his fantasy of sexual exploits, but he is impregnating Helena. 

Difficult circumstances seem not to justify a character’s bad behavior. Helena uses all kinds of manipulative tactics to get what she wants, but we empathize with her because her goal is aligned with her people. She brings healing and peace to every situation she attends. Because of her limitations of power, she must use deceptive techniques, but her effect is for the common good. She cures the king of his disease, but to even get his attention she must be willing to wager her life. Helena risks her life to marry Bertram and Betram risks his life to find sexual freedom. 

Bertram is a narcissist known for his heroism and his dishonesty. He needs a conspirator, though. His friend Parolles is a funny caricature of bro culture. He’s all for the exploits, but when he falls victim to a prank and is kidnapped, we see just how little courage he possesses. These two together make a pair of fools who are driven by their lust and are blind to the gravity of their situation. 

Bertram the unlikable antihero is nothing more than a pawn to show the cunning and courage of Helena. Not only does she orchestrate their marriage, but she also grieves having caused him to run away. She overcomes her emotions to do the right thing for the common good and that is why she is a beloved character. Bertram is a character who desires freedom more than his responsibilities or other people’s rights. The play, All’s Well That Ends Well shows us that deception is not as important as intention through the transgressions of Helena and Bertram. They both use dishonest techniques, but Helena does so for the common good and Bertram does so for his personal gain.

Listening to Helena: Shakespeare and Writing from Memory

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I’ll admit it. I’m stuck. All’s Well That Ends Well is very challenging to listen to. And that’s why I love it. So far, it is beyond my ability to fully grasp. Every play takes some time to learn, but this one is barely leaving a trace. Part of this experiment is to write from memory. Let me explain.

When you draw from memory, it is a lot different than when you draw from life or from a photograph. Drawing from memory requires a different kind of concentration and the same is true with writing. The process is much different. Your attention is fixed on one process. You don’t go back and forth, there’s no looking things up, no interrupting the flow of thought. Just like when you draw from memory and all your attention goes into the drawing, when you write from memory you understand better what you really understand.

It is one thing to be able to research and ask questions, it’s another skill set to be able to remember what you have learned and to recreate it for someone else. That is another level of mastery. Understanding a few texts well gives you the tools you need to write well from memory. Why experiment with this method of writing?

Internet culture is so fragmented and decontextualized that it is training our minds to make huge leaps quickly. Because we are overwhelmed with information about the world, there is a pressure to move with speed. We counter our fear of missing out by spreading our attention thin. If we think about culture like exercise, then every direction we push in we should also build in the opposite direction. That’s how bodies work. It’s how cultures work too. We need a dynamic balance between our opposing strengths.

So, writing from memory is a way to form a continuous uninterrupted thought about a subject without introducing a lot of other voices and opinions. They will come later, and a dialogue is the desired outcome. To really form your opinions, though, you must sit with the noise of your memory and sort out what you really think.

Writing from memory is a strange kind of listening. How do you access what you know? It requires effort. You must think about how the play opens. What is the context? Who are the characters? There is a discussion of the king’s illness. There is a conversation about the daughter of a recently deceased surgeon. This is Helena. She will eventually talk her way into many different situations. Choosing a character gives you a way to navigate your thoughts about the play. Helena is the most interesting character in the play because she motivates all the action, she makes all the successful moves. 

First, she must get past the doubt instilled in the king by his expert physicians. They believe that his malady is beyond remedy and so when Helena seeks to give him treatment, there is a reluctance to take her seriously. Helena doesn’t take no for an answer, though, and she persists in convincing the king that she can help him. Not only was her father a highly skilled doctor, but he left behind a book of notes about everything he cured. She has some research to use to her advantage and she does. What really cures the king, though, is her dogged persistence. If she were not so determined to be effective, then he would never have allowed her to attempt to cure him. 

Helena goes further than simply curing the king, she does so under the condition that he will grant her the right to marry whomever she chooses if she is successful. Helena is not from a noble family. She is poor. Still, she manages to assert her will and to use the king’s power to marry the man she wants. 

She also wins over her husband Bertram’s mother. When Bertram abandons his new wife–whom he married against his will–to fight in a war in Italy, his own mother writes him out of existence and replaces him with Helena. Helena pursues what she wants and speaks her value into existence. Because Helena wants to marry Bertram, she cures the king. Because Bertram leaves her, she first gets his mother to take her side and then she plots to get him back from Italy.

One of the themes I’ve noticed in Shakespeare’s Comedies so far is the interplay between love and war as psychological forces. In the comedies, there are some dark and violent moments. The power of love is shown to be more powerful, however and ultimately wins the day. The will to love is the dominant force in Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well and Helena is the voice that brings it into being.