That Weird Medieval Switcheroo Pregnancy Trope

Shakespeare’s play “All’s Well That Ends Well” is resolved happily when Helena reveals that not only is she alive, but in fact, it was she that Bertram slept with, not Diana, and she’s even pregnant with their child! Everything settles into place: chaste Diana will earn herself a hefty dowry from the King, Helen consummates her marriage to Bertram, and… Well, you know. It’s in the title.

We don’t often see narratives like this anymore, or at least, not positive ones. Helena’s trick, presenting herself as someone else in order to fool Bertram into having sex with her, would never turn out “for the best” in the modern day. Rather than a story of comedy, bringing things to a cheery close, that sort of plot would be found in a horror story about a rape – especially in this era of technological concerns such as identity theft and other forms of internet based identity deception. (By the way, has anybody written the futuristic barcode-identity dystopia version of this story yet?)

A credit card stealer... claiming to find out if your card has been stolen.
Just another day of  liars lying on the internet, right?

But by early modern standards it’s just fine. Maybe even funny! Helena’s cleverness gives her the life and the love she’s dreamed of. How is that possible?

There’s some weird precedent for this kind of thing. Shakespeare isn’t just pulling this out of his elaborate joking sexual metaphor for a butt. One that comes to mind is the story of Uther and Igraine, the parents of Arthur Pendragon, or King Arthur. Yeah, the one who pulls the sword out of the stone and all that.

There are many different versions of the story, but here’s a short version of a popular one: Igraine’s husband, the Duke, rides off to battle while Uther has Merlin bewitch him to make him look like the Duke. Then, so disguised, he has sex with Igraine. Igraine gets pregnant, the Duke conveniently dies in battle, and afterward Igraine and Uther marry so that Arthur, future King of England, is a legitimate child.

Ringing a few bells? Okay, let me reword a few things.

Uther wants to bed/wed Igraine, so he pretends to be somebody else. She gets pregnant, he marries her, and they live happily ever after with their legitimately born elite-class child. Helena’s actions are basically a gender reversal of Uther’s. In “All’s Well” the main differences are that they’re already married (though not consummated, kind of important back then) and she wants to get pregnant.

If you ask me, Shakespeare’s doing something interesting here. Sure, Uther and Igraine aren’t the only story of mistaken-identity-cheating in old stories, but they’re unique in that it turns out alright. The fact that it turns out alright is made possible by the fact that Uther is a powerful high-born man, and Igraine – often by as little as 3 hours! – becomes an unmarried widow, so he has every right to “claim” her, in a sense.

Helena looking at Bertram, Bertram looking away...
Shakespeare sets up nicely for Helena to get what she wants.

And in a similar sense, Shakespeare’s decision to begin the play with that half-complete marriage legitimizes this trickery as something that can work from a female standpoint. What if she and Bertram hadn’t been married? Why, she’d be a seductress of some sort. But because the King married them, she’s only getting the sex he’s legally required to give her – by early modern standards of course, since this is all rape by ours, but marital rape and informed consent weren’t concepts back then.

Helena gets pregnant, Bertram’s in love with her after all, the end. Ta-da! Shakespeare takes a plot that previously required patriarchal ownership to make it work, makes it about a woman, and succeeds by using the marriage standards of the time to put her in power instead.

Not half bad.