In Heywood’s retelling of the Trojan War, the sisters of Sparta do not. And still, despite men getting away with everything, these women were expected or forced to stay quiet and let this mistreatment happen. From the moment they weren’t born with the “right” anatomy, women were treated as property, chattel, or currency for men to use in their trades. Girls were expected to be compliant, and were unable to forge their own identities because they were shackled to that of their fathers, first, and then their husbands. It’s no surprise that being a woman in Ancient Greece was hard. Heywood purposefully keeps her heroines morally gray as they grow up and lose their innate childhood innocence. Heywood does a wonderful job of explaining why the sisters make the choices they make, some being mind numbingly easy, and some being extremely difficult, while also never casting her own opinion into her writing. The story is told from two points of views, both Klytemnestra’s and Helen’s, and Heywood seamlessly shifts between each sister’s different thoughts. The topics of femininity and womanhood are explored, as well as the complexity of sisterhood. But Helen of Troy is much more than the face that launched a thousand ships and Klytemnestra is much more than the grieving mother and angry wife who killed Agamemnon-those are unfair characterizations of the two women that have unfortunately stuck, plaguing the sisters in almost every retelling and adaptation of the Trojan War.Ĭlaire Heywood’s Daughters of Sparta follows Helen and Klytemnestra’s journeys, chronicling their characters from their childhoods to the pivotal moments that make them the legends they are today. Both sisters are often maligned for their actions leading up to, during, and after the Trojan War. Remembered for her role as villainess to her own children in Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Klytemnestra has become a symbol for womanly rage and vengeful mothers. Helen of Troy’s sister Klytemnestra, sometimes spelled Clytemnestra, is less popular but just as controversial. Her illicit relationship with Paris, a Trojan prince who falls in love with her even though she’s a married woman, is often regarded as one of the most well-known romances in literature, up there in notability with Romeo and Juliet in terms of star-crossed lovers. Immortalized by the Iliad and since portrayed in television, films, and books, Helen is often seen as a representation of the bored unfaithful wife and a selfish woman. The legend of Helen of Troy is a well-known one.
Vivian Nguyen ‘25 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer
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