White (Motif)
The word "white" is used twice in the first stanza and once in each remaining stanza. Referring each time to Helen's physical appearance or condition, the words could signify Helen's innocence, her femininity, or embodiment of peace and love in a world pulling her into its violence. The color could also indicate that the speaker is describing a statue of Helen, and the stone is white. This version of whiteness may emphasize how fossilized Helen has become in the collective consciousness and the modern epoch, or perhaps the deathly pallor of a woman who must die in order to be loved. Alternatively, when Helen's face grows "wan and white," the whiteness may suggest the trauma she has endured, and that all women have endured, at the hands of the patriarchy. In this sense, the whiteness is a representation of how women are both expected to be pure and passive, but are also reconstituted physically and emotionally by the pain they experience. Women are torn equally between demands for elegance and splendor, and the white-knuckle grip of terror and oppression. Lastly, the theme of whiteness could also allude to Helen's royal privilege and beauty, which possibly breeds resentment in the Greek imagination.
Helen and Greece (Symbols)
In this poem, Helen is a symbol of all women who have faced eviscerating hate from culture and society, which often knows no bounds and has no rational cause. Greece, then, is a symbol for our patriarchal and misogynistic culture that—while full of men with very real pain, trauma, and anger—becomes an inhuman, dehumanizing, and "unmoved" mass of masculine cruelty. Such a force feels unstoppable; so much so, according to the poem, that this relentless, undiscriminating hate stops only after death.
