SOURCE: “All's Well That Ends Well and Shakespeare's Helens: Text and Subtext, Subject and Object,” in English Literary Renaissance, Vol. 18, No. 1, Winter, 1988, pp. 66-77.

In the following essay, Snyder probes the characterization of Helena as a sexually aggressive woman through instances of indirect and suppressed speech in the play.

I'm going to move into my speculations from two different directions. One point of departure is a set of gaps, disjunctions, and silences in All's Well, places where we lack an expected connection or explanation in the speeches or actions of the main character, Helena. The other is, on the contrary, an unexpected coincidence, a connection between that somewhat mysterious Helena and a character in another play which on the face of it is quite unlike All's Well.

Helena's career strangely mixes aggressive initiative and passivity. She begins All's Well in a state of social and psychological constriction: a...