Reread Yeatss Leda and the Swan. Does his retelling of that myth ...

[sammy]

Reread Yeatss Leda and the Swan. Does his retelling of that myth addan ironic dimension to line 13 of Helen?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Why do the other women know how to apply lipstick more accurately?What does this knowledge suggest about the difference between them and the speaker?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

[hramirez205]

Answer to Question 1

• If one reads Helen in the context of Yeatss Leda and the Swan (which H.D. would almost certainly have been familiar with), the line Gods daughter, born of love takes on a bitterly ironic dimension. As Camille Paglia writes in her analysis of Yeatss sonnet:

Zeus, the amorous king of the gods, swoops down in disguise from Olympus to take his pleasure, but the girl he targets experiences his desire as assault and battery. . . . The myth of Leda and the swan was a popular romantic theme in Renaissance art (Leonardo and Michelangelo painted it), but the tale was treated as a charming, pastoral idyll and rarely if ever shown from the victims point of view. In Yeatss version, womanizing is not a titillating sport but a ruthless expression of the will to power. (Camille Paglia, Break, Blow, Burn New York: Pantheon, 2005 115)

Answer to Question 2

They started doing such things at an earlier agewhich suggests that perhaps the speaker was a late bloomer, or perhaps chose not to use lipstick at one time in her life for political or other reasons. Her use of the words those women and these / women suggests that she feels alienated not just from expert appliers of lipstick but, perhaps, from more sexually attractive or confident women generally.

[sammy]

Thanks for the timely response, appreciate it

[diana chang]

Great answer, keep it coming