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Summary
Helen receives the Countess’s greetings from the Fool and inquires after her new stepmother’s health. Parolles joins them and informs Helen that pressing business calls Bertram away, so their marriage must remain unconsummated for the present. Her husband, Parolles reports, wants her to make ready to return home and then come say goodbye to him.
Meanwhile, Lafew warns Bertram that Parolles is not a great soldier, as he claims to be, but Bertram pays no attention to him. Helen comes to her husband, who apologizes for his hasty departure. She begs a kiss from him before he goes, but Bertram refuses and rides off, accompanied only by Parolles.
The First Lord and Second Lord are in Florence, where the Duke of Florence expresses his regret that the King of France has refused to assist him in battle. The two noblemen share his unhappiness, but they remind him that many young French nobles will come to fight for Florence independently of their King.
Meanwhile, Helen has returned to Rossillion, where the Countess reads a letter from her son that declares his intention to remain in foreign lands rather than endure his marriage. Helen has also been given a letter, which declares that when she wears his ring (which he never takes off) and bears his child (impossible, since he has not slept with her), he will live as her husband. In other words, he will never be a spouse to her. Brokenhearted, she resolves to leave Rossillion, since her presence is keeping Bertram from his home, and seek refuge elsewhere.
In Florence, the Duke makes Bertram a general of his horse.
Back in Rossillion the following day, the Countess discovers a letter from Helen, declaring her intention to make a pilgrimage to a monastery. The old woman curses her son’s folly and orders her Steward to write immediately to Bertram in the hopes that he will hurry home. She also hopes also that Helen will eventually return so that her two children will be reconciled.
Analysis
Bertram’s distasteful behavior only grows worse in these scenes. His parting from his new wife is a painful thing to watch, since Helen’s devotion is so nakedly evident. She raises no objections to his hasty departure, and she asks only for a kiss goodbye. The contempt he offers in return is obvious and brutal. Still eager to please her new husband by acting the subservient wife, Helen agrees to return to Rossillion. Yet there she faces additional humiliation, as she’s met with his contemptible letter and its impossible conditions. Once again, we find the play incorporating tropes that ordinarily belong to the fairytale: here, our questing heroine is made to face and overcome the impossible. Having been trapped in someone else’s fantasy, Bertram responds by casting himself in the role of the villain. And indeed, there can be no doubt of his villainy, since his own mother decries his actions and goes so far as to renounce him as her son: “He was my son, / But I do wash his name out of my blood” (3.2.69–70).
For her part, it remains unclear what it is that motivates Helen in her pursuit of Bertram. Despite his execrable treatment, she continues to sing his praises in the lofty register typically reserved for love poets. Further, she seems eager to take all the blame for his cowardly actions, asking: “Poor lord, is ‘t I / That chase thee from thy country and expose / Those tender limbs of thine to the event / Of the non-sparing war?” (3.2.116–19). From the audience’s perspective, this question is completely absurd. Indeed, in the very next scene Bertram clearly expresses his preference for war over love: “Great Mars, I put myself into thy file. / . . . I shall prove / A lover of thy drum, hater of love” (3.3.11–14). The problem of Helen’s unwavering love for Bertram remains unresolved as she makes the decision to leave France altogether.
Yet however meek and subservient Helen may seem in the early scenes of act 3, it’s possible that she is already plotting to get Bertram back. When she leaves word that she plans to go to the St. Jaques monastery, she gives no hint that she plans to follow Bertram. However, as we see in the next scene, she’ll soon appear in Florence dressed as a pilgrim. This appearance is conspicuous for a couple of reasons. First, Helen knows that Bertram left the King of France to go fight for the Duke of Florence. Then there is the basic matter of geography. St. Jaques is in Spain, which lies to the west of France. Why, then, does Helen show up in Florence, which lies to France’s east? In retrospect, then, it will seem that Helen’s sudden departure from Rossillion marks a turning point for her character as she abandons her wifely subservience and goes on the offensive. In this way, Helen comes to resemble her adoptive mother, the Countess, who has been plotting the marriage between Helen and Bertram since early in the play.
