Helen Morgendorffer

Helen Morgendorffer (née Barksdale) is a character created for the MTV animated series Daria. A corporate lawyer, she is the mother of Daria Morgendorffer and Quinn Morgendorffer.



Background
Helen Barksdale's early years were spent in the shadow of her older sister, Rita, whom her mother spoiled rotten with attention and money. Helen grew up extremely resentful of being ignored but at the same time determined to be the best at everything she did, probably in hopes of one day winning the approval of her parents. Once in college, Helen became a hippie and joined the late 1960s counterculture. While in Middleton College, she met Jake Morgendorffer and the two began dating. Jake and Helen each had issues with their families and may have connected because of that. After college, the two moved into a commune with friends before getting married in June 1976. Helen enrolled in law school and, like her husband, rejected the hippie lifestyle and embraced the world of corporate America.

Helen became a corporate lawyer, a career that became the focus of her life. Even after she became the mother of two daughters, she continued to work at the expense of her family. While failing to make partner at the firms she worked for, Helen likely became the family bread-winner due to her long hours put in at work, though the exact amount that she earns in comparison to her husband is never revealed either in actual salary numbers or real work hours put in respectively with either parent. She currently works for a Lawndale firm called Vitale, Horowitz, Riordan, Schrecter, Schrecter, and Schrecter.

Personality
Helen Morgendorffer is a classic Type A personality, driven to be the best and succeed no matter what. This results in her often neglecting her husband and children, which she does regret somewhat on a regular basis. Despite her strong drive for corporate life, Helen is equally driven to fulfill her roles as mother and wife to her family, though this task seems far from easy. Helen throughout the duration of the television series tries to show care and love for her family, though her work continually interrupts or overshadows such efforts. Nonetheless she continues to make these attempts without slackening, and occasionally is successful.

Relationship with her sisters
Things were generally strained at best between Helen and her two sisters, Rita and Amy Barksdale. As is evident in "I Don't" and "Aunt Nauseum," the trio let childhood quarrels and long-ago family issues dominate their adult lives. Helen and Rita tended to start out making nice, then begin arguing intensely, while Amy would wander off after making sarcastic comments about them. A change for the better (one hopes) came at the end of "Aunt Nauseum," when Daria and Quinn shamed their mother and aunts into calling a truce to a major argument the older women were having.

Relationship with her husband
While her husband may frustrate her at points with his various personality quirks, neuroticism, cluelessness, and crazy antics, he is still the man she loves and married, and in some episodes it is shown that the flame of her marriage is not gone.

Relationship with her daughters
Concerning her children, she constantly tries very hard to juggle her self-imposed demands for success corporately with the difficulty of raising her two daughters as they grow. In nearly every episode Helen tries to show interest and involvement in her children's lives, even if it makes her seem occasionally intrusive and annoying to them. This involvement is not always displayed as a parent-curiosity or concern, as sometimes she imposes rules and limits on her daughters. Usually these limits are only necessary for Quinn, as Daria rarely acts foolishly or without thought or restraint, but such limits are often set upon both daughters, in what is usually claimed to be an act of fairness to all.

Throughout most of the series, Helen's attempts to chat with her daughters often sound over-friendly, rehearsed, or insincere. This is probably because her daughters are growing up very quickly and due to her fast paced and demanding career, she has not been able to keep up with their lives in a way she feels comfortable with. Furthermore her daughters, while rarely openly hostile or resentful of their mother, almost never invite or seek to converse and discuss teenage issues with her. Despite such difficulties, Helen unyieldingly and continually attempts to enrich her relationship with her daughters. Her efforts appear somewhat fruitful in the short term, and may be fruitful in the long term.

Relationship with Daria
Helen's obsession to be the best described with her relationships with her children and in particular, her relationship with her oldest daughter Daria. Helen is constantly pushing her daughter to be more involved with school activities, to be more of a conformist, and to make friends (or "network") with the more popular students at Lawndale High. Often Daria finds herself pressured or bribed with money to go along with her mother's demands.

Daria tends to speak with her mother more often than her sister Quinn Morgendorffer does, and usually the conversations are of an adult level of maturity. At times Helen will succeed in getting Daria to talk about whatever current trouble she is dealing with. On occasion Helen demonstrates a deeper understanding of her daughter's habits than most of the family gives her credit for, such as in the episode "Write Where It Hurts," where she succinctly explains Daria's cynical habits and offers some help and sage parental advice.

Despite this understanding and her personal history, Helen also develops a profound fear of Daria becoming sexually active. Why she would have this concern when she knows her eldest daughter is not given to impulsive acts is not explained.

Helen's perception of Daria is made clear in the final regular episode, "Boxing Daria." In this story, Helen and Jake learn that their daughter is concerned they considered her a burden. At this fear, they firmly explain that while her cynical and sardonic loner personality has been a concern, they consider it worth the price for having a gifted and perceptive daughter of deep principles.

Feminism
One of the main aspects of Helen Morgendorffer's character is her feminist beliefs, which are rooted in her involvement in the 1960s counter-culture. A firm believer in gender equality, she has tried to instill the same sort of beliefs in her daughters. This often puts her in conflict with her youngest daughter Quinn, over her daughter's belief that her looks are the most important aspect of her life. However, Helen is not a misandrist, as she loves her husband and while she may not approve of all of Quinn's boyfriends, she is nonetheless kind and polite to young, middle-aged, and older men that she comes into contact with.

Evil Helen
Helen's workaholism affects her ability to be a good mother, a character defect that was explored in the episode "Psycho Therapy" but is visible as early as "Esteemsters" ([to Daria] "We tell you over and over again that you're wonderful and you just...don't...get it! What's wrong with you?") Though Helen also shows herself at times to be quite perceptive (e.g., "Write Where It Hurts" and Is It Fall Yet?), certain fanfics carry her parental disconnection to the extreme, producing the Evil Helen stereotype. This stereotype was especially strong in early fanfics, as revealed in "To Helen Back," by C.E. Forman, "Connect Four," by Diane Long, and the fanfics by Michelle Klein-Hass. However, it persisted in later ones as well, such as "Darius" by The Angst Guy, an alternate-universe story in which grave marital and family stresses have overwhelmed her motherly instincts and made her quite ruthless. Another AU portrayal in this vein appears in The Angst Guy's "It Slipped Through My Hands, Like a Shadow, Like a Dream" (see "Author's Notes II" at the end of this tale). The gold standard of the 'Evil Helen' stereotype is depicted in Brother Grimace's government conspiracy-based fanfic 'It's All About Respect'. See also Tired Daria Fandom Tropes.

Human, but Fallible
Season Two and Season Three episodes would have a softening effect on fanfiction portrayals of Helen from 1999 onward. Kara Wild's Driven Wild Universe portrays her as not just stressed out and well-meaning, but also in search of missing satisfaction with her life. John Takis's "A Mother in Spite of Herself" has her reduced to tears because failed efforts to connect with Daria, while in Jon Kilner's "On the Outside," Helen gingerly tries to get closer to Quinn.

Sapphic Helen
Perhaps the most unusual portrayal of Helen is in those fics that depict her as having, or having had, same-sex inclinations and/or relationships. These stories almost always center around Helen's time in college, where the 'free love' motif of the 1960's and 1970's comes into play.

The most notable works that touch upon this sensitive topic are the Writes of Passage episode Tie Died, My Darling by Deref, where Helen reveals that she had a serious relationship with a woman while in college (which began before she met Jake), and Brother Grimace's sequel to Night of the Storm, The Winters of Those Gone Before, in which Helen's repressed same-sex inclinations are explored with nightmarish repercussions that nearly destroy her family.

Brother Grimace has also mentioned the failed fanfic Moonflower as part of the source material for 'Winters'; that failed work (soon to be posted at Lawndale Leftovers), was a time-travel story with a Helen/Stacy shipping as the crux of the work. The fic would have involved an older Stacy (nentioned in passing as involved in post-doctoral work in high-energy physics) who meets Helen during the Fourth of July weekend during the summer between her first and second years at Middleton College, and their engaging in a passionate (albeit short-lived) affair that begun with a crush that Stacy had developed on Helen as a teenager. (The fic pre-supposed that Helen was at least a year older than Jake, and started school a little later still (because of her birthday being in late June to late July, as mentioned in The Daria Diaries).

Trivia
Helen Morgendorffer is voiced by Wendy Hoopes, who also voiced Daria's sister Quinn and her best friend Jane.