Helena Glory Domin

Character Analysis

Helena the Human

Helena is easily the most human character in the play. That's because she gets the most stage time; we know more about her than anyone else. But it's also because she's the least robotic, the most empathetic. She initially comes to the R.U.R. factory because she is concerned that robots are being mistreated:

"For God's sake, you are people just like us, like all of Europe, like the whole world! The way you live is undignified, it's scandalous!" (prologue.224)

Helena isn't actually talking to robots here; she's mistaken the factory supervisors for robots, just as earlier she mistook Sulla, the robot secretary, for a human. You could see this as a sign of her foolishness and naiveté. She's a confused do-gooder who can't tell what's which. But you could also see this as a sign of Helena's essential humanity. The robots to some degree are stand-ins for working-class people. Domin and the supervisors treat them as subhuman, but Helena doesn't. She sees no difference between upper and lower class; to her, people are people.

More, when Helena does recognize a difference, she works to change it. She convinces Dr. Gall to try to give the robots souls. She tries to put an end to the creation of robots by burning the secret formula that shows how to create them. In both cases, she's trying to get rid of the distinction between robots and people, because she thinks that there should be no division of class. All people should be people. When Fabry tells her, "Nothing is further from being human than a robot," Helena responds, "Why make them then?" (prologue.267-268). Again, her confusion is a sign of her humanity. To her, the reason to create life is to create more human beings, not to set up some poor, trampled-on underclass solely devoted to work and slavery.

Helena the Robot

If Helena is the most human of the human characters, though, you could also argue that she's most robotic. That's not because she's unfeeling or because she works a lot. It's because she's treated like a robot. (Are we blowing your minds yet?)

Helena is the only human woman in the play, and Domin treats her with casual sexism. At the end of the prologue, he demands that she marry either him or one of the other supervisors. "But I don't want to, for God's sake!" Helena says, reasonably enough (prologue.385). But Domin ignores her and marries her anyway. She's treated as a piece of property, just like the robots; her own desires are irrelevant.

That's the case through the rest of the play, too. Under the guise of protecting his wife, Domin tells her nothing. He treats her as a valuable object to be moved from point to point as he wishes. When she tries to say anything or give him necessary information, he invariably interrupts her:

"Wait, Helena. We're discussing a very serious question here." (2.187)

Domin treats Helena as a non-person, just like he treats the robots as non-people. She's part of the underclass, just like they are.

At the end, the link between Helena and the robots is made explicit. After she dies in the robot attack, one of the robots that remains is named Helena. Helena, the robot, talks just like the real Helena, down to some of the same verbal ticks (they both drawl out the word "d-r-r-readful").

Helena the robot gets a soul, too—she becomes essentially human. But is she really free? Alquist continues to treat her more like a thing than a person. "Helena, take him," Alquist says, pushing her to marry Primus (3.228). Robot Helena seems more into Robot Primus than Helena is into Domin—but still, she never exactly gets to say "I do." Instead, as with Helena's marriage, someone else decides who Robot Helena is to spend her life with, without her getting a vote. Even when she's got a soul, somebody it seems is always trying to own Helena.