On Friday 16th November, members of By Jove took part in a spoken word evening, which was part of a series of events called ‘Weaving Women’s Stories’, organised by Dr Emma Bridges and Dr Ellie Mackin Roberts as part of the Being Human Festival. For this event, our poets wrote new works engaging with women in ancient myth for whom weaving was an intrinsic part of their stories and a way that their voices could be heard.
This piece, written and delivered by Wendy Haines, looks at the famous character of Helen of Troy. Helen is famous in myth as being the face that launched a thousand ships, the reason the Greeks and Trojans went to war: Helen was taken by Paris back to Troy after being promised her as a prize by the goddess Aphrodite. Helen’s husband Menelaus launched an excursion of all of the Greeks to retrieve her, a matter that they had sworn to at Helen and Menelaus’ wedding. Helen spent the ten years of the war in Troy as Paris’ wife. The Iliad depicts her disdain for him, but also her feelings of repulsion towards herself for being, as she sees it, the cause of the war and of so much death. In the Iliad, Helen is also depicted as weaving an image of the battlefield as seen from her perspective from the walls and towers of Troy, including the significant heroes on both sides. Wendy’s poem explores this weaving work in conjunction with Helen’s feelings about herself and her concept of how she is perceived by the other women in Troy.
I feel your eyes as I pass your threshold, scratching me, wondering if I was carried off or if I came willingly, but you blame me either way. The air stings my arms today, the sun is burning them, bringing little dots to the surface and covering my pinpricks, and I know that you seethe with hate for that little piece of skin I dared not to hide. I never craved the love of men like I crave you, your respect, your community, and you shun me for my skin. But your hate is fair. I talk to your ghosts and play that they accept me. I made the web as a gift for you, your story, to show I understood, but I wasn’t foolish enough to expect forgiveness, just maybe some understanding back. There’s still nothing but spite resting on your lips, only coming out when I can’t witness it. I have to read it in the daggers you’re throwing me now as my heel disappears around the side of your street.
If I ever had a chance to love Troy you’ve made it so I can’t, ever. I am so seen. Leaving never solves anything. The last time I left I sealed the fate of thousands, and thousands more are balanced on the tips of my eyelashes, fearing the precipice, and one tear of mine in happiness, hurt or hate could topple them down. So I dared not feel, and I lost any desire to after a while. If there’s one thing Paris can inspire in me, it’s absolutely nothing.
Pacing inside, safe between walls and away from eyes, but I hear you living. Feeling trivial things, and cursing my face when the rage takes you. My only company is my tapestry, my fabric chorus, and the suffering I mean to immortalise. And I stand feeling sorry for myself, feeling guilty for feeling sorry for myself, and for spending so much time considering the feeling of guilt for feeling sorry for myself and not feeling sorry at you instead. But you shunned me, and all I have is to feel sorry without ever expressing it to a face.
I was clumsy at first, my needle pricking my skin every other stroke and my lines jagged. Criss-cross faces peeping bluntly at me, contorted and childish, telling tales of war and suffering with such inadequate stitches. The blood from my fingers soaked into the thread, and I tainted the bodies I wove with me, as I have tainted the lives of their flesh counterparts. Blood should never be given lightly, the bodies in my tapestry glistened red in candlelight. Small mutterings, fabric twitches, a chorus of little voices telling me that death is at my feet in awe. If your beauty is worth a thousand ships and a thousand lives I suppose you don’t need our forgiveness. But I do, though I can’t earn it with a tapestry, I can earn it in blood.
The needle pierces my forearm and I force it through, gritting my teeth, trickles of red dripping luxuriously on the stone floor, through the hairs on my skin, on the folds of my dress. It is so little in the grand scheme. I watch it spread through the cracks in little webs, then dry to a brown husk. The thread pulls through my flesh, I don’t cry for it, and I push the needle through again. Slowly you start to form, your memories and stories, through me. It will scab and sore, but the thread will stay.
Even in the heat I cover my arms, I won’t have you seeing my penance, if you’ll only meet me in hate I won’t be weak. I work for nights and days, a red pool forming under me, plucking seams through my skin. My arms first and my legs, my stomach, any part of me I can reach is given to you now, until I try to move and the stitches pull me back inward. The pieces of me conjoined like unborn twins, lame and imprisoned within my chambers.
Someone calls to me, a servant likely, and I try to call back but my mouth is sown shut by my own hand. I beg them not to enter but it’s too late, and they see the monstrosity I’ve made of myself crouched in the dark, slick with wounds. As they run from me, I know I’m out of time. Dragging across the floor, I climb to my loom and I feed myself into it. I think on Menelaus, on Paris, regretting I ever let them into me, and as my skin is torn away into threads, woven into something truly beautiful, I laugh at the faces of the Gods when they see what I’ve done.
I made this tapestry for you, my women of Troy, to tell your pain and make sure it is never forgotten. Perhaps you might see me within it, and know I felt for you. Maybe you might hang me in a public place, and tell strangers to this land the pain I caused and the punishment I gave to myself.
