and everything is green and submarine

The tradition allowing her to choose her own husband develops this emasculating innuendo, assigning Helen a male prerogative that places Menelaus in the position of a bride. Nor did Helen, like most women, relocate to her husband’s household upon marrying him; instead, the couple remained at her home in Sparta, an unusual practice that places the woman in a much stronger position and is associated with greater female authority. When Helen sails away to Troy with Paris she thus jeopardizes her husband’s status at Sparta, which is dependent upon his wife. That departure, in pursuit of her own desire, is itself a usurping of masculine prerogative made possible by Menelaus’s failure to exercise proper husbandly control.