By Adrianna Aguilar - Dance

hero’s struggle and challenge that one must observe rather than that of either of the two males.
The characters of the work correspond to individuals in Graham’s life:
Graham makes Jocasta the analysand and also appears to cast Tiresias as her
analyst. It is the latter that appears at the start of the piece and forces her to
face up to her past. The fact that, when he reappears at the end of the piece,
he no longer stops her from hanging herself suggests that she has now
resolved whatever psychological conflict it is that they were working on. 34
Her life is directly represented in the work and the title, and Frances Wilkes becomes the Tiresias
figure in her interactions with Erick Hawkins. Helen becomes a representative heroine for
herself, for the poet, and also for all women through H.D.’s new form of poetic writing: “In
presenting the story of the Trojan War in a new form, H.D. comes to terms with the ironic fact
that she (Helen) is being blamed because the poets (the Greeks) are fighting over her…In
presenting the lament of the Trojan maidens, H.D. is suggesting that all women, Trojan and
Greek, are made to suffer for the warrior impulses of men.” 35 The battle Helen faces as the hero
of the work is not only her battle, but it is also representative of the battle H.D. feels all women
face in their relations with men.
Graham’s innovation in establishing a Modernist setting starts with the artistic environment
created by Isamu Noguchi’s set. It follows the same desire to connect the audience with the
emotions and the culture of the past and “looks as if it has been constructed out of fossilized old
bones. Both sculptor and choreographer surely saw this as a way of evoking the age-old,
archetypal significance of the Oedipus myth.” 36 Night Journey, which premiered in 1947 with
music by William Schumann had the power to inspire emotions such as sadness or
34 Ramsay, 44.
35 Robinson, 102.
36 Ramsay 41.
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