“Até ao fim do mundo”: Amor, rancor e guerra em Hélia Correia

Hélia Correia’s play O rancor: Exercício sobre Helena is the basis for a textual analysis of both classical and modern understandings of the role of women in the context of war. In Hélia Correia’s contemporary version, women reproduce and highlight some of the signs already present in Greek tragedy and epic poetry in what concerns the problematic of female sexuality and passion, as countervailing forces to the male warlike instinct, which they eventually overthrow. The reading presented here focuses on different aspects of the juxtaposition of the sexes in the context of war: namely, the dynamic between mother and daughter as agents of female solidarity in confrontation with the male warlike imperative; the mother-son relationship as inscribed in the filial oedipal dilemma of choice between the warrior father and the atavistically loved mother; the question of maternity/paternity and of the voluntary or refused sacrifice of sons and daughters to the interests of war; and the problem of the passional representation of the enemy as an object of desire and figuration of the ideal of the beloved