The Trojan Women Essay Questions

Can Helen be trusted? Why or why not?

Helen's loyalty is to Helen; Hecuba is correct when she tells Menelaus that Helen will betray him again. Although it is true that initially Helen is kidnapped by Paris and taken to Troy, she succumbs to his charms and willingly has an affair with him, never trying to escape. She convinces Paris that she is trustworthy and proceeds to betray him too, having already betrayed Menelaus by entering into a sexual relationship with Paris.

Helen tells Menelaus that she was prevented from thinking about escaping by a curse that had been put on her, and she was not released from this until the Spartans overcame the Trojans. This is untrue, but it is a very good example of Helen's gift for manipulation. She not only creates a viable excuse for her willingness to stay with Paris, but she also casts the Trojan women in a bad light, implying that they will set curses on the Spartans if they are able to. In a play that demonstrates loyalty and courage in the face of danger, she is one of the few characters that has no loyalty to a country or a family. In stark contrast to Helen, Hecuba is still thinking about how to rebuild Troy even when she is in imminent danger.

How do the Greeks use Hecuba's children and grandchildren to control and subdue her?

It seems that every time Hecuba comes up with a plan to reinforce Trojan positions or to save her family from the Greeks, her plans backfire because the Greeks have already predicted what she might be planning to do and have a plan to combat every eventuality. Despite having killed almost all of her direct descendants, they still use Cassandra and Hecuba's grandson as bargaining chips. They threaten her family and her family's honor, and they even prevent her from avenging the murder of her grandson by threatening to deprive him of a proper burial if Andromache sets a curse on the Greek ships returning home, thereby destroying his passage into the next life after removing him violently from this one.

They also realize that any compliance by the Trojan women will be a ploy and so Hecuba's plan to have her daughter-in-law obey her new master entirely in the hope of being allowed to raise her son herself is scuppered. It seems that everything she comes up with to rebuild Troy is prevented in this way, which is why Poseidon and Athena are so angry, ultimately setting curses on the Greek ships themselves.

What was the literary impact of this play? What was its historical impact?

Although critics debate the success of the play's structure, The Trojan Women is considered to be one of the most historically important Athenian dramas. As a piece of literature, it lacks plot development, focus, unity, and variation in language and tone. However, as a piece of cultural history, it is one of the most important works of its time. This is because it depicts the barbarism of the Greeks towards both their enemies in general and towards women and children in particular. The Greeks killed children, enslaved women, and exonerated those who raped them. This is an interesting challenge to the way in which the Greeks saw themselves: as the bastions of gentility, art, and nobility.

It also shows that, in general, the women of the time were strong and determined but also noble in their dealings with their opponents and with those whom they captured—a stark contrast to the play's male characters, which are quick to murder and enslave the women they bring back from Troy with them.

What was the role of the audience in the original staging of the play?

With regard to the Athenians who saw the drama when it was first staged, Euripides may be trying to convict them for their behavior at Melos the preceding year. The slavery, the rape, the excess, and the extensive slaughter of The Trojan Women is mirroring Melos. Thus, as C.A.E. Luschnig suggests, "Euripides is forcing his audience to join in the drama, not as the sufferer, but as the tormentor. He is forcing them to look at their own behavior."

Why does Euripides invoke the Muse closer to the middle of the play rather than at the beginning?

Normally the Muse is invoked at the beginning of a Greek drama, but here it comes near the middle when Hecuba and the chorus are mourning Troy after hearing from Kassandra. First, this Muse isn't singing of glorious exploits and heroes; rather, she is, as Hecuba requests, to "Sing a tearful hymn / of lamentation for the dead; / sing in a new strain" (59). The placement later in the text is "striking" and consists of a "new programmatic statement," as Dana Munteanu writes. This Muse isn't answering questions or illuminating mysteries; rather, she is dealing with suffering and sorrow. The chorus of women who invoke her do so for "tragic themes and for the abandonment of epic." The placement of the invocation thus shows how this play contrasts with other epics, specifically in its focus on the victims.