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

The quotation of Helena in Alls Well that Ends Well Helena There is an cardinal equivocalness in Helena s character. Spreading the illustration over the tetrad most disputed moments in Alls Well, the virginity repartee, the miraculous cure of the King, the accomplishment of conditions and the come - trick, one throw out detect the different shades of in her character - honourable, passionate, discreet, audacious, romantic, rational, tenacious, forgiving ... She can be sampled out to be basic each(prenominal)y an idiosyncratic person with her effectual 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 whole ambiguity in Helena ensues from unrealistic dramaturgy and realistic conception of women. end-to-end the play, one sees Helena jostling ingenuousness with sexuality and at quantify there seems to be two Helenas, one who is conventionally tame and the some another(prenominal) who is actively all out ... a love - sick Juliet that is cause at the end to expose her darling s ill practices. One could canvass Helena with Isabella in Measure for Measure, since the characters argon engulfed by different stack that demand each of them to act differently. Isabella is a religious figure slice Helena is only love-driven. Helen ... virtue in action ? All other characters contribute to the promotion of Helena as a virtuous character and though in Act. II Sc. v Bertram addresses her with here comes my clog he does not accrue her already cultivated uprightness which forgoes inherited wealth and nobility. The Countess is convinced that she has a noble virtue that her son cannot achieve through his valour in war. Her virtues were assigned to her by her father and by Heaven to whose intervention she ascribes all her ability to cure the King. Somehow, she is that semi-divine person or some type of spic-and-span saint in fighting for what is genuine and lawful and personifies virtue in action. This saviour projection with which W. Knights endows her could have been further sustained by showing that it is root in what Lefaw says in Act II Sc. iii - They say miracles are past and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless. accordingly it is that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.