Helen, Retold

There's a new novel (by Margaret George) based on the story of Helen of Troy, called...Helen of Troy, reviewed here by the Nashville Scene:

There’s a scene near the beginning of Helen of Troy, Margaret George’s latest historical fiction blockbuster, in which the prepubescent Helen Still-of-Sparta snatches a mirror from her mother’s dressing table, determined to see what all the fuss is about. Till now, our heroine has been forbidden to look upon her own reflection: mindful of an ominous prophecy (“She will be the ruin of Asia, the ruin of Europe, and because of her a great war will be fought, and many Greeks will die!”), Queen Leda and King Tyndareus have kept their youngest daughter veiled and secluded.

But Helen, at least in George’s incarnation, is a burgeoning spitfire: as she defiantly raises the looking glass (or looking bronze; this is, of course, the 13^th century B.C.) to take the measure of her fabled face, the anticipation is intense. After all, the precise nature of Helen’s gorgeousness is one of the great mysteries of western civilization. How will George—a Nashville native whose novels featuring such notorious females as Cleopatra, Mary Magdalene and Mary Queen of Scots have landed her on numerous best-seller lists—describe the face that launched a thousand ships? “I saw my face in the brightly polished surface of the bronze, saw it in the sunlight,” Helen reports. “Or rather, saw part of it—the eyes, which were fringed with thick black lashes, and the mouth and cheeks. In that fleeting instant I saw my flushed face, the bright green-brown of my eyes. That was all….”

That was all? We’ve waited 3,200 years to gaze upon the world’s most beautiful woman, and we get nothing more than a mouth, some cheeks and a couple of eyes with long lashes? Clearly George is making a point—Helen can’t possibly appreciate or evaluate her own beauty—but must we readers also be immune to the knee-buckling effect our heroine has on everyone she meets?