Did all really end well?

While reading All's Well That Ends Well, I was initially pleasantly surprised by the amount of agency that Helena had. There have been some fairly strong female characters (like Tamora) in the plays we've read so far, but I don't think any one of them stood out to me as much as Helena did. This woman knew what she wanted, and she made sure she got it. But, considering the way in which she got it (all puns intended), should we really hail her as an ideal heroine?

Think about it. Helena came up with a plan to save the King's life so she could ask for Bertram's hand in marriage (a woman asking for a man's hand - Shakespeare sure was more progressive than many people today).

Even when Bertram made it pretty clear that he didn't want to have anything to do with her...

When thou canst get the ring upon my finger which

never shall come off, and show me a child begotten

of thy body that I am father to, then call me

husband: but in such a 'then' I write a 'never.'

(Act III Scene 2)

...Helena kept pursuing him. I couldn't help but wonder: How would we (progressive people) be feeling about this situation if the tables were turned - if Bertram was a woman and Helena was a man? 

I'm pretty sure it would enrage a lot of us. I'd certainly be pissed off. It would be the classic narrative of a woman who makes it clear that she isn't interested, but the self-righteous man just has to keep forcing himself on her. There's even a meme about this.

And when all else fails, he resorts to manipulating her. I guess I could play devil's advocate here and say that All's Well That Ends Well is different -  Bertram was being snobby, or shallow, or whatever because he first rejected Helena due to her social ranking. But, doesn't he have the right to choose? 

Later on in the play, when Helena works out her scam (aka when Helena makes a deal with Diana to switch places so that she can have sex with her husband without him realizing), we see Bertram stripped of his agency even more. It's bad enough that he got stuck with a wife he didn't want and had to escape to war. Now, she's tricking him into sleeping with her so he has to be with her forever, too?

When gender roles are reversed, there's actually a name for this kind of deception that Helena pulls. It's called reproductive coercion. We usually see this term being applied to cases when:

1. A woman's sexual partner pressures her (sometimes with threats or acts of violence) into having unprotected sex to get her pregnant, or when the partner pressures her into continuing or terminating a pregnancy.

2. There is birth control sabotage. This includes verbal sabotage (which is verbal/emotional pressure not to use birth control or to become pregnant), and behavioral sabotage (which is the use of force to have unprotected sex/not to use birth control), and actual acts of sabotage such as poking holes in condoms or flushing birth control pills down the toilet.

Reproductive coercion is a form of domestic abuse. There are campaigns about it (see below).

I am in no way trying to diminish the experiences of women who endure this kind of abuse. I know quite a few that have dealt with it, and it pisses me off. But at the same time, aren't we kind of excusing Helena's behavior just because she's a woman? She, in a sense, rapes Bertram when she tricks him into impregnating her so she can force him to stay in the marriage.

This reminds me of the myth I sometimes hear floating around that women can't be perpetrators of sexual violence or abuse.

That's not true. Abuse is abuse, regardless of the gender of the perpetrator.

In this play, Helena has all of the qualities that would set off a red flag in my mind about someone. Helena, despite being a strong female character, is also obsessive and manipulative - quite like Tamora, actually.

All may have ended well for her, and that is just not sitting well with me.