ABSTRACT
Stories of smart girls intrigue me as a bright woman. Somehow, even today it doesn’t really seem to be acceptable to be a smart female, and patriarchy is still entrenched in culture. This was not so in stories of clever women I read as a child. In folk and fairy tales from around the world, heroines faced diffi culties, but in the end triumphed and were appreciated. When translated for modern audiences though, the heroines of such stories never seem to be functional, smart women. Until recently, for example, Disney versions of fairy tales required the heroine to seek outside assistance. Queen Esther of the Bible is somewhat of a Jewish version of the wise and beautiful girl who saves the day. In too many synagogue Purim Spiels, though, she becomes a vapid beauty rather than a clever and brave woman. One of my favorite fi ctional characters, Irene Adler, also fares badly in modern interpretation. She outwits Sherlock Holmes in the original story “Scandal in Bohemia,” and is the only person to ever do so. Arthur Conan Doyle portrays her as clever, kind, bohemian, and slightly outside the law, yet on fi lm she is often depicted as an evil bank robber, murderer, or even recently a selfi sh dominatrix. 1
This is why Helena is a surprising heroine in Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well . She is a smart young woman who goes through a much more diffi cult time than many of the women in other tales. She is very unappreciated by her new husband, even though she proved a remarkable woman, performing a medical miracle. Then by the end of the play she supposedly dies and comes back to life, and in the process, solves the problems of her in-laws, her new friend Diana, and Diana’s mother. Then again, her husband Bertram caused much of the disruptions and woes of these people; in the end he repents of his rejection of Helena. The smart girl triumphs!
