Beauty as Performance: Helen of Troy and the Modern Eidolon in Anne Carson and Ellen McLaughlin

In Helen, Euripides reimagines the myth of Helen of Troy by staging a conflict between reality and illusion through the figure of the eidolon, a phantom double created in Helen’s image. In contemporary rewritings this motif is transformed into a reflection on beauty, femininity and performance under patriarchal culture, as seen in Ellen McLaughlin’s Helen (2004) and Anne Carson’s Norma Jeane Baker of Troy (2019). Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity alongside feminist critiques of beauty by Naomi Wolf and Susan Bordo, this paper argues that both texts present beauty as a constructed performance sustained through the male gaze, while the theatrical form of the texts further reinforces this performativity. In McLaughlin’s play, Helen ultimately fails to maintain the perfect feminine image demanded of her, leading Menelaus to prefer the phantom over the living woman. Carson conflates Helen and Marilyn Monroe to reinterpret the myth through modern celebrity culture, exposing the divide between Norma Jeane and the manufactured icon “Marilyn,” between lived reality and constructed illusion. Through the myth of the eidolon, both authors reveal how patriarchal cultures privileges the image of femininity over female subjectivity, reducing beauty to a spectacle that must be endlessly performed.