All's Well That Ends Well

The opening act introduces the reader to the main characters of the play: Helen, Bertram, the Countess, and the King. Key elements of the play’s opening include The Social Construct of Honor and Reputation, which is most expressed in Helen’s lamentations about the difference between her own class and Bertram’s. As the son of a count, Bertram is now Count, but he is too young to take on the role, leaving his mother, the Dowager Countess, in charge, while he must go to Paris as a ward of the King. Though Helen’s father gained respect, status, and the nobility’s favor for his medical skill, Helen is still a commoner, meaning that her love for Bertram is ostensibly hopeless and bordering on taboo. The early set-up of this social class conflict and its frustrations become significant to The Nature of True Love and Duty, as Helen declares her romantic interest in Bertram to the Countess. When the Countess expresses motherly feelings for Helen, she means to express love and kindness, but Helen immediately thinks of how she and Bertram cannot be together either way. As Helen details: “My master, my dear lord he is, and I / His servant live and will his vassal die. / He must not be my brother” (1.3.163-65). Helen’s assertion that he is “her master” reflects her conflict: She perceives that Bertram is too far above her to be a suitable love interest but her language also reflects her desire to make herself fully subject to him, as his wife. The Countess’s offer of motherhood is in fact a turning point as, rather than suggesting a filial relationship between Helen and Bertram, as Helen modestly assumes, she is also keen to be Helen’s mother through marriage. It is the Countess who suggests that Helen could become her daughter-in-law and proposes her pursuit of Bertram. The play also suggests that the Countess’s unexpected support of Helen’s suit is likely due to similar experiences in the Countess’s youth, as she recalls to the audience: “Even so it was with me when I was young. / If ever we are nature’s, these are ours” (1.3.130-31), reflecting how true love is innate and immovable. From these lines, it could also be taken that the Countess was a commoner before marrying Bertram’s father, contextualizing her support and sympathy.

Thus far in the play, much of the agency is held by women, with the Countess running the estate, and she and Helen concocting a plan for travel to Paris. When Helen speaks of her envy of the women at court, her phrasing places the agency with the women, not with Bertram, and Helen’s discussion with Parolles over virginity, too, places the sexual agency with Helen. The scene shows Helen winning verbal and logical ascendancy over Parolles, whose discussion of her virginity seeks to tease and demean her, suggesting that she should give her virginity to the first man who shows interest and casting her femininity as a commodity. Helen maintains her dignity throughout; even in lamenting the difficulty of her situation, Helen says: “What power is it which mounts my love so high, / That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye?” (1.1.226-27), referring to Bertram’s noble birth, not to any sense of innate personal or gender-based inferiority. As such, the play’s treatment of the issue of Female Agency and Social Expectations shows the marked oppression caused class, while simultaneously upholding the agency of women. Helen’s line implies that, were she of noble birth, she would pursue Bertram openly, regardless of gender dynamics. The Countess’s memories of young love, too, seem to align more with her own desires being expressed, rather than any accident of fate or manipulation from a man.