One of the most interesting passages of the Odyssey, as translated by
             Robert Fagles, is when one of the central characters remarks of a great
             (male) hero that "I tell you," he "would have repaid me well if he'd grown
             old right here. But now he's dead ... If only Helen and all her kind had
             died" instead. The character remarks that he wishes that Helen had been
             brought "out too, brought to her knees, just as she cut the legs from
             under" the great warriors of Troy. In other words, rather than the male
             characters of Greece and Troy, who actually engaged in a war over the fate
             Helen, the character of the woman is blamed for the destruction waged in
             her name. (Fagles 299) Both Guinevere and Helen are beautiful, valued for
             their ability to inspire men to military prowess, yet blamed to the dying
             warrior's last breaths for their cruelty in sundering male friendships,
             even though these women did not will such sunderings nor such bloody wars
             The above-cited quote from the Odyssey highlights ultimately how it
             was a bond between men, a vow to fight for the most beautiful woman in the
             world, that inspired the war, and not any sense of competitiveness between
             Greeks and Trojans. Now, all the men who died and lived for her beauty
             blame Helen for the decision of her father to command her suitors to
             forever fight for her honor. This ire, as expressed even after the war has
             terminated shows how Helen, like the later Arthurian heroine Guinevere,
             functions not in her as a real woman' but as a medium of exchange between
             men. Helen in male eyes is merely an object to justify war, an object of
             beauty ideally designed to establish the valor of men through military and
             chivalric inspiration. But neither woman really exists an entity within
             the narrative, as a character that the text considers interesting in and of
             her own soul and will. Women, at least beautiful women, exist as symbols
             a...