Debate over who can play Helen of Troy misses something more interesting: in Homer, she emerges as a rare figure capable of questioning fate, power and her own responsibility.

Elon Musk was deeply unimpressed when Lupita Nyong’o was cast as Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, joining critics who accused the director of ‘race swapping’. The ensuing argument focused almost entirely on whether a black actor could plausibly play an ancient Greek demigod.

But there is something far more interesting about Helen than the colour of her skin.

Helen’s ’terrible beauty’ that started the Trojan war places her at the centre of the stories of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Yet feminist critics have argued that Helen remains on the margins, defined by the male gaze and blaming herself for eloping with Paris, the wayward son of the king of Troy. This is something the text implies: “bitch that I am, vicious, scheming – to freeze the heart!” Contemporary critics of Nolan’s new film have extended this feminist approach, saying that Helen is diminished, occupying only five minutes of screen time.

To understand Helen this way is to ignore her revolutionary nature. Helen is important because she cannot be contained within feminist readings, nor........

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