"All's Well That Ends Well & Gender Constraints in the Workplace"

 Helen in Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well is a strong, intelligent, and goal-oriented woman. In order to get the man that she loves and move up the ranks in society, she is willing to do whatever it takes. In the beginning of the play we get the King of France that is dying of a fistula, and all the male physicians can’t seem to find a cure for him. Helen, the late daughter of a doctor, and taken in by Bertram’s mother, is able to gain an audience with the king to deliver a cure in exchange for the means to marry whomever she wishes. What is hard core about Helen is that she is willing to sacrifice her life, if the cure does not work, and that she is unapologetic in her abilities to obtain her goals. This of course, our “dear” Bertram has a serious problem with. What I found interesting is the exchange between Helen and the King when she is trying to convince him to accept her father’s cure. One would think that the King would be up for anything in order to live, but this is not the case. The King blatantly admits that her credibility as a physician is considerably less to non-existent due to her gender. When Lafeu enters and addresses the King, he notifies him that there is someone there that can cure him, it is the king that automatically assumes that the physician is male.

            This kind of sentiment is nothing new. Since the nineteenth century women have been fighting for the rights of women, and the destruction of female gender constraints.  Gender inequality in the workplace has been a long struggle for women trying to break into a male dominated arena. This is especially true in the field of medicine. “The entrance of women into American medical practice during the mid-nineteenth century was a direct outgrowth of the social reform movements that characterized the period.” – http://www.hws.edu  the early female physicians faced many struggles in order to achieve success and acceptance. This is still a problem for women and the LGBTQA in the workplace. Females in male dominated professions still make less money on the dollar to their male counterparts, and members of the LGBTQA are harassed in the workplace, and denied jobs based on their sexuality. This is evident in All’s Well That Ends Well. In 2.1 of the play Lafeu has to remark on Helen’s qualifications and credibility, and makes it seem like a major accomplishment considering that she is female. “With one that in her sex, her years, profession.” (2215) Even though Helen is not a physician herself, she is obviously intelligent enough to interpret her father’s work, and deliver a cure to the king. The king tells Helen that he is not going to put his trust in her ability when all the male doctors before her that are among the Assembled College of Physicians (2215) have declared that medicine cannot beat nature, and that he fully expects her to fail (2216). Helen hearing this tells the King that she is willing to put her life on the line, and offers up her price for healing him.  If it had been another male who had offered a cure to the King and the price would have been a wife, and not a husband, it is Bertram that would have received no resistance, and Helen would have submitted to being a prize against her wishes.

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.