Jitender Gill - Royal Beauty as Object of Desire

Royal Beauty as Object of Desire: Politics of Abduction in
Greek and Indian Mythology

"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships/and burnt the topless towers of Ilium!" Marlow's paean to Helen in Dr. Faustus is interesting for reasons other than the hyperbolic tribute it pays to her beauty. Its importance lies in the convenient fashion in which Marlow transfers the responsibility for destruction of Troy from Trojan and Achaean warriors to the solitary and vulnerable figure of Helen. It is symptomatic of an archetypal theme - exploitation of women, especially royal women, for political convenience in ancient cultures. The ab-use of royal women in games of political one-upmanship played by rival clans also appears frequently in Indian myths and legends. For instance, Sita's abduction by the demon-king Ravan in the Ramayana presents an interesting parallel and contrast to Helen's. Other well-known episodes like the kidnapping of Rukmini by Lord Krishna in Mahabharat and Samyogita's by Prithviraj in Prithviraj Raso can also be explored fruitfully in this context.

Whether it is Helen, Sita, Rukmini, or Samyogita, these royal beauties are coveted primarily because of their association with rival states. Their abductions signify not merely a violation of the woman but loss of face for the nation to which she is affiliated, in the eyes of both the abductor as well as their male relatives. The woman is incidental to the competition for supremacy in which the two rival states indulge.¹ By investing her with the 'honor' of the race to which she belongs, men from both sides compete to retain or capture her. The royal beauty in both cultures thus, becomes an object of competition between her kinsmen and their enemies; a trophy representing victory that each group aspires to. This is clearly illustrated when Hera angrily insists that Athena should take prompt action against "Priam and all the men of Troy" for whom Helen is "a trophy to glory over"² in the Iliad. The fact that each one of these women is a renowned beauty enhances the abstract values invested in her. The woman's beauty therefore, adds to the allure that she already possesses for men who perceive her as an embodiment of their geo-political ambitions.

Archetypal myths and legends originating in ancient patriarchal cultures, in spite of diversity of cultural contexts and the manner in which these perceptions may be articulated, give substance to this fact. Paris came to Sparta with the specific purpose of meeting Helen. He knew that Helen was married to Menelaus, and hence, presumably unavailable for amorous dalliance. Yet he deliberately flouted the sacred laws of hospitality when he cuckolded his absent host, Menelaus, and ran away with his wife. Later when Greek armies attacked Troy, Paris preferred to fight rather than acknowledge the wrongness of his deed, which resulted in slaughter of thousands of men. But the most astonishing fact is that, apart from a few protests,³ Trojans not only allowed Paris to behave thus, but actually supported him by fighting with the Argives. The reason, one can assume, was that Helen's presence in Troy represented some kind of collective victory for Trojans over their rivals!

Paris' fascination for Helen and his foolhardy action in abducting/seducing her is considered self-explanatory, given her acknowledged status as the most beautiful woman in Greece, and Paris' well-known susceptibility to feminine charms. This fact was already known when, on being given the risky honor of judging a divine beauty contest, Paris chose Aphrodite as the most beautiful goddess in response her promise to give him the most beautiful woman in the world in return.⁴ But one wonders why didn't Paris' long-suffering family try to send Helen back to her husband with suitable apologies, rather than fight the seemingly never-ending, self-destructive war with Greeks?

Normally, one would expect an exploration of the reasons that led Helen to leave her child, Hermione, and husband for a virtual stranger. But no poet has bothered to question whether it was Paris' seductive charm, boredom with married life, repressed spirit of adventure, or obedience to divine will that made Helen take the drastic action of eloping with a married man⁵ of a different clan in this unthinking and irresponsible fashion. The seduction/abduction of Helen then, seems to be merely an excuse that the two sides use to prove a political point to each other. It seems that, for Greeks, forcing Helen to return was actually a political expedient to maintain and consolidate their hegemony. Helen seems to have been used as an excuse to settle political scores with old rivals. In fact, Paris' seduction of her and his family's acceptance of this runaway married woman as his wife implies that her presence in Troy meant precisely the same thing for the Trojans too, not only because she was the greatest beauty but also because she was the queen of Sparta and related to the most powerful family in Greece as her husband Menelaus was the brother of Agamemnon, chief among Greek lords! Poor Helen, her rebellion, if one can see her elopement/abduction in this light, against socio-cultural compulsions seems to fail miserably because of her royal rank. Her personal choice and happiness stand no chance against the imperative demands of cultural and political self-assertion. Had she been just a beauty, her decision to leave her marital home with another man would not have resulted in war and Greek heroes would certainly not have spent ten years to forcibly bring her back from her lover's house!

The irony is that the tale of Paris' judgment of the contest involving Hera, Athena and Aphrodite takes away the last vestiges of self-determination and volition that Helen might have tried to exercise by choosing to go with Paris. According to this tale, Helen is merely the bribe granted by Aphrodite to Paris for cheating in her favor. By choosing to be thus rewarded by Aphrodite who promises him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Paris has apparently won Helen as a prize by divine will, with or without her own choice and her marriage to Menelaus notwithstanding. As a result, Helen is projected as an unwitting, unresisting instrument in the hands of capricious gods who use her as an excuse to teach a lesson to arrogant warriors and destroying Troy.⁶

There is no doubt however that Helen is the object used by both Greeks and Trojans to enhance or justify their political ambitions. Once those aims are fulfilled, she loses the aura of transcendent beauty and desirability and becomes just another well-to-do hausfrau trying to impress her youthful guest Telemachus with her hospitality.⁷ The story of Helen's ethereal beauty that resulted in her abduction and a ten-year war seems to have an anti-climactic end in the Odyssey, where she is presented as an aging matron contentedly living with her boring, old husband. Her eventful and scandalous past seems to be nothing more than a memory. Helen does not seem to suffer from any sense of guilt for being the cause of large-scale destruction of Greeks and Trojans, including Paris, a man whom, presumably, she must have loved at one time. In addition, one wonders, why did the Greeks feel the need to fight for ten exhausting, fruitless years to get one, errant wife back? The ostensible object of this battle, to bring Helen back, does not seem to be worth the cost in terms of loss of life and time. One assumes then that getting Helen back, with or without her volition, was obviously more important in the larger, socio-cultural as well as political terms, than losing the greatest warriors in both factions.⁸

However, the attitude of later poets like Marlow, toward Helen has been much more judgmental than her contemporaries, possibly because of the subsequent dominance of Christian morality, which cast Helen in the mold of Eve, whose female destructiveness resulted in the Fall. It is this anachronistic, Christanized, post-lapsarian, fallen creature that we see in Marlow's vision of Helen, where she is held solely responsible for the collapse of Troy, even though it was she who was seduced by Paris, not vice-versa, and was used as a pawn by gods to teach human beings a lesson! In Marlow's version, Helen is simultaneously denied volition and demonized as the corruptor and destroyer of men. Her incredible beauty serves not only to justify the infatuation of Paris and Greek resolve to fight to death but also to camouflage the pragmatic political maneuvering underlying this war.

Predetermination and divine will function even more unambiguously in Sita's case. Superficially, Sita's abduction by Ravan seems to be somewhat similar to Helen's. Sita, who was also renowned for her beauty, is already married to Ram, the crown prince of Ayodhya, when Ravan kidnaps her. Like Paris, Ravan too abuses the laws of hospitality by posing as a mendicant and kidnapping Sita as she served him in Ram's absence, thus giving Ram and his allies a just cause to wage war against Ravan. Therefore, the abduction of Sita is also used as a political expedient by her kinsmen to attack a powerful enemy. However, cultural differences drastically change the interpretation of this act in the two narratives. In the Ramayana, the battle between Ram, Sita's aggrieved husband, and Ravan, the aggressor, is projected as an instance of eternal tussle between good and evil. Unlike the secondary status granted to Menelaus vis-a-vis Achilles, Agamemnon and Odysseus, Ram is the focus of the Indian epic. Sita's abduction provides Ram, the incarnation of the all-mighty Vishnu and embodiment of all masculine virtues, with a valid excuse to rid the world of evil Ravan. Consequently, the abduction of Sita can be seen in the light of 'Felix culpa', the wicked deed that actually illustrates God's infinite grace, since it allows him to destroy evil that afflicts the world.

In Homeric epics, in spite of her divine origins,⁹ Helen's human weaknesses and strengths are never in doubt, while in the Indian text, Sita, like her husband who represents the acme of manly qualities,¹⁰ is portrayed as the epitome of womanly virtues. There is never the slightest doubt that Sita, the chaste wife, has been forcibly taken from her husband by Ravan, thus making his act more reprehensible than Paris' which implied persuasion rather than force. In the Ramayana therefore, the moral veneer applied to the war for dominance raging between two mutually inimical races and cultures provides crucial justification to reinforce the protagonists' status as ethically perfect beings.

Moreover, since the Ramayana was written by the conquerors, its cause is obviously justified as being morally viable. This becomes evident, especially when one compares Sita's abduction with Rukmini's. Since the Mahabharat too is a record of the victor's triumph, the chance of self-justification is granted to the winners. Even though, in Mahabharat, one of the heroes, Krishna, takes princess Rukmini away from her family by force, the poet explains carefully that this incident took place with Rukmini's concurrence as she wanted to be taken away from home where her alliance with Krishna would have been frowned upon by her brother Rukmi.¹¹ It seems then that when a "hero" commits the criminal and morally unjustifiable act of abduction, it is because the woman wants it to happen, while her hostile clansmen obstruct her path to personal fulfillment. The "hero" acts to help the powerless woman, which further reinforces his stature as a champion of the weak as well as a flamboyant and romantic figure. However, for Yadavs, the clan to which Krishna belonged, the successful culmination of Rukmini's abduction was a matter of prestige as Krishna is enthusiastically assisted by his brother Balaram and his army to accomplish this task. On the other hand, when such an act is committed by the other side, it is considered to be aggression against the nation as well as violation of the woman! This application of double standards allows each culture to conveniently justify or condemn the same act according to its convenience and apparently without any sense of ambivalence.

Similarly, Samyogita's abduction by King Prithviraj Chauhan, her father's bitterest rival, can be interpreted in two diametrically opposed ways, depending on the perspective. King Jayachand, the father of Samyogita, considered the seizure of his daughter by his neighbor as a brazen act of aggression against his honor as a father and king and therefore, deserving an open declaration of war. On the other hand, in Prithviraj Raso, Chand Bardai,¹² celebrates his patron's abduction of the enemy's daughter as an act of valor by turning it into a romance.

In the Ramayana too, pragmatic politics underlying the fight between the Aryan Ram and 'Asura' (demon) Ravan is carefully contained in this ethical/moral matrix, as the primary rationale for the attack on Ravan's kingdom comes from Ram's natural outrage at his wife's abduction. But the important fact is that Ram's wish to save his wife from her abductor's clutches has large-scale political ramifications in which numerous states, rulers, and chieftains are involved. The abduction of Sita, like Helen's thus, is an expedient employed to organize a well-concerted effort to contain a powerful enemy.

There is no doubt that Sita's abduction by Ravan in the Ramayana has wide-ranging socio-cultural implications that go far beyond Helen's experience. In keeping with the popular belief in the Ramayana as a record of perfection of Hindu 'dharma' or culture, Sita, the ideal woman, is made to undergo the agni-pariksha¹³ to establish her chastity during her period of confinement in Lanka. Unlike Helen, Sita's travails do not end with her return to the husband. She is later forced into exile by public opinion that is not convinced of her chastity during her captivity. Ram, the perfect king, accedes to the views of his subjects to prove his credentials as a good ruler, while pregnant and powerless Sita, in spite of having done all to prove her innocence becomes, once again, the victim of male political compulsions and designs. She pays a far higher price than Helen for being abducted by her husband's enemy. There is no contented middle-age in store for Sita who, tired of being the victim of political, social, and familial demands, opts to vanish from the earth, when she has no other recourse left. It is obvious that Sita is a victim of political machinations, even more so than Helen. There is no seduction/ persuasion involved in her case. Firstly, she is forcibly taken by her husband's enemy and then made to undergo many humiliations to prove her innocence and in spite of that, exiled for no fault of her own. Sita, in fact, pays a higher price for being "Purushottam" Ram's wife than Helen ever does for her actions.

Culturally speaking, Greeks were much more forgiving of Helen's folly than the people of Ayodhya, who demanded supreme sacrifice of their rulers and were not willing to concede the slightest chink in their perfect facades. Rukmini and Samyogita are closer to Helen in being given a semblance of choice, as they voluntarily leave with their abductors. Their abduction was also romanticized in popular discourse. But Sita's plight calls for a different response. She is abducted, unlike the other beauties, without the slightest hint of seduction/persuasion. Then she has to prove her innocence under duress and is later forced into exile, in accordance with the demands of contemporary social and political compulsions. Furthermore, in some versions of the myth, the political intrigues underlying Sita's abduction as well as exile are cleverly camouflaged as being products of her actions in the past. Her abduction by Ravan and separation from her husband, it is claimed in one version, are actually the fulfillment of a curse she has earned rather than the victimization of an innocent.¹⁴ This particular version, ironically enough, tries to hold Sita responsible for her condition than the socio-political scenario of those times.

There is no peaceful resolution of Sita's life. Though born a princess and married to a king, she spends most of her life wandering in the forests, first to accompany her husband during his exile engineered by a designing step-mother, and later as a woman abandoned by her law-abiding husband to pacify public demand. Sita thus, is an innocent victim of contemporary politics to a greater extent than either Helen, or Rukmini and Samyogita and a mute testimony to the dominance of patriarchal discourse in each culture. On the other hand, Helen's reincorporation into Greek society, which she had abandoned, seems almost painless. But her motivation for leaving her home and family and eloping with Paris never becomes clear and is not deemed worthy of any consideration by Greek poets. For Homer and other writers, the significant fact is that Helen's abduction/elopement with Paris resulted in the battle of Troy. Helen's disappearance with Paris matters insofar as it acted as a catalyst for the important business of war, leading to her forcible return to Sparta as a spoil of war after this carnage. Therefore, Helen, like Sita, Rukmini, and Samyogita, is merely a pawn in the game of male politics, which merely reinforces the idea of female, especially royal women's, subordination to political compulsions.