Helen Of Troy Does Counter Dancing Analysis

English 124 – Essay in response to research area #2. In the poem “Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing” by Margaret Atwood the speaker, a stripper by the name of Helen, portrays aspects of both control and exploitation. The stripper portrays these images when she is on stage, and when she is attempting to justify her decisions with her conservative tone. These themes are evident in both situations, when she is on stage she is exploiting herself to persuade the men into paying her for her exotic dancing therefore controlling them. When she attempts to validate herself and her actions to us it reveals that she is in control of herself and she controls, if and how much she exploits herself.
The stripper, in Atwood’s verse, is very proud of her
These images are particularly evident when she performs on stage and when she attempts to defend herself and her life choices to the audience. The idea that the three texts referenced, in this paper, is the idea that Helen is her own person with her own morals and opinions. The fact that she is a stripper doesn’t make her any different from anyone else; she still has dreams and ambitions. She isn’t exploited by anyone but herself and she has full control of that. When Helen is on stage she shows full control of herself and the men who come to watch her exotic dancing. She controls herself because she forces herself to do this loathsome job. She controls the men through her dancing, just like the legendary Helen of Troy, she is a goddess of beauty and negatively influences these men to leave their wives and come watch her on stage. She controls them with desire. She contains a mysterious air about herself and the men are intrigued by it. They come so that she may fulfill them with the desire and the satisfaction their lives are lacking. Everybody tells her to get a real job meaning get a job with some self-respect. Yet Helen doesn’t want to; she enjoys exploiting herself, the money that comes with it and the feeling of being a goddess wanted by many. In fact she feels bad for those who don’t get to do her job; those who don’t get to feel what it’s like to be a