All's Well That Ends Well

The second Act features a dramatic shift in the treatment of Female Agency and Social Expectations, which becomes a central aspect of the play’s action and meaning. As Helen peruses the lords the King offers her for a husband, she appears to relish the power of her situation. She jokes with the men, commenting to one lord: “You are too young, too happy, and too good / To make yourself a son out of my blood” (2.3.104-5), acknowledging how her lower class status is not ideal to the lords. Helen knows that she is not the most desirable partner to these aristocrats, but a critical component of her lightheartedness is the foreknowledge that she is going to choose Bertram. Helen demonstrates the maximum possible agency to acquire Bertram as a husband, but she shows herself willing to give up her agency and submit to his decisions, fulfilling her social expectations as his wife. This is important, as it shows that Helen’s independence will not necessarily make her an unsuitable wife by the standards of the day. In response to Bertram’s order, given both in person and through Parolles, Helen only responds: “In everything I wait upon his will” (2.4.56). Up to this point, Helen follows her own will, concocting the plan to go to Paris, healing the King, and choosing her husband, but, now that she is Bertram’s wife, her role shifts drastically into that of an obedient spouse. When Bertram plans to betray Helen, the play creates suspense over which version of Helen will react: the submissive wife or the independent woman with the agency to pursue him.

The initial conflict set up in Act 1 between The Nature of True Love and Duty and The Social Construct of Honor and Reputation comes to fruition in Act 2, as Bertram attempts to reject Helen as his wife, then flees to Florence to escape the church ceremony. In the moment of setting aside her agency, Helen declares to Bertram: “I give / Me and my service ever whilst I live / Into your guiding power” (2.3.110-12), referencing that her obedience to him has shifted from that of a subject to a wife. It is specifically because of her class status, though, that Bertram asks the King if it is necessary “to bring me down / Must answer for your raising?” (2.3.123-24), framing the issue of Helen’s marriage as a degradation for Bertram. He openly declares: “I cannot love her; nor will strive to do ‘t” (2.3.156); though, within this somewhat contradictory declaration, Bertram concedes the possibility that he could try to love Helen. He makes no objection to Helen as an individual—he is opposed only to her status in the social hierarchy. The King insists on the marriage but compromises by saying that he can raise Helen to the nobility, and Bertram reluctantly agrees. He is constrained but he gives his word.

Bertram’s plan is to flee to Florence, swapping his honor as a man of his word for the honor of the battlefield. Obeying the King and receiving Helen as his wife will benefit Bertram’s standing in the court, but he wishes to gain honor and reputation through warfare. Bertram has already expressed a desire to flee to the Florentine war, and now he compares war and marriage, noting: “Wars is no strife / To the dark house and the detested wife” (2.3.307-8). Crucially, Bertram cannot not know that his marriage will be unhappy, as he has rejected any attempt by Helen to talk about the marriage and will not enter into it properly. The play suggests that the only real obstacle to their happiness is Bertram’s pride. Bertram lies to Helen, telling her he has business to attend to, and that he will meet her back in Rossillion. When Bertram secretly claims that he will “never come” home “[w]hilst [he] can shake [his] sword and hear the drum” (2.5.100-1), he is framing his decision to go to war as the more honorable of two choices. Parolles enforces this framework by saying “Bravely, coraggio!”, which connects the choice of war with bravery and courage, which, in this context, are synonymous with honor and reputation. The parallel of war and love is a linguistic and thematic pairing in the imagery throughout the play, associated respectively with male and female, and this helps to unfold the play’s theme of The Social Construct of Honor and Reputation. Bertram sees his honor as situated in the masculine sphere of war and is blind to the part of his honor and reputation that is aligned with his personal and social dealings. In rejecting the “feminine” sphere of marriage, love, and fidelity in favor of war because his sense of pride as a man and a noble has been injured, the play shows that Bertram has a one-sided sense of morality and honor.