3.4 Exploring Penelope’s story

Hello. I’m Emma Bridges from the Department of Classical Studies at The Open University. I’m here to talk about the Odyssey with my Open University colleague, Christine Plastow. Welcome, Christine, and thank you for joining me today.

Hi, Emma.

Now, the Odyssey, as its title suggests, focuses mainly on the character of Odysseus, his adventures on his journey back from Troy and his eventual return home to Ithaca. So for much of the poem, he’s either doing the talking or he’s being talked about by other people. But meanwhile, his wife, Penelope, is back at home dealing with challenges of her own. So Christine, Penelope’s perhaps most famous for being Odysseus’ faithful wife. But what else can you tell us about her?

I think one of the most interesting things about Penelope is that she’s often thought of as being cunning in a way that is almost equal to the way that Odysseus is considered to be cunning. So she’s very clever, as well as being cautious. She’s always looking for ways to solve problems. And she’s quite a powerful figure, I think. Even though she’s in some ways quite reserved, she certainly looks for ways to exert her power and to have control over her life.

So it sounds as though she’s a lot more interesting than the description of her just as a faithful wife suggests. How do you think the fact that Penelope is a woman in a society ruled by men influences the ways in which she responds to some of the challenges she faces?

Well, as you say, Penelope is a woman in a patriarchal society. So that’s a society that is controlled by men, ruled by men, and really centred around men. So within that society, we would assume that women, obviously, are in a less powerful position. But this doesn’t necessarily restrict Penelope as much as we might think, or rather, Penelope finds ways to exert her power, even within that patriarchal society. So as Odysseus is gone from Ithaca for such a long time, for 20 years, Penelope has to rule in his stead. So she has to manage the household, and of course, in a royal household, that’s more than just managing the bills and looking after the family, but actually managing the state as well. She has to keep everything safe, Homer tells us, so she has control of Ithaca. And that’s part of why the suitors are turning up because they want to have that control. They want to take that from her. And go back to having a man in charge. But she also uses some of her things that are available to her as a woman as ways of exerting her control and her power. So for example, her trick, her ruse with weaving the shroud and then unpicking her weaving at night, weaving and all kinds of textile work are really associated with women in the ancient world. It’s considered to be women’s work. And so it’s really interesting that Penelope makes use of something that is really considered to be a woman’s job, a woman’s art, as a way of exerting a bit of power and control in a patriarchal society.

So we’re getting a real sense here of the practical responsibilities that Penelope has to take on in Odysseus’ absence and some of the ways in which, even within the limits imposed by her gender, she deals with those. So aside from those practical responsibilities, what, if anything, do we learn in the Odyssey about her emotional experiences during this time?

Well, obviously, Penelope has been essentially left at home by her husband for 20 years. And that is a really difficult situation for her. And we can see that in the way Penelope is characterised in the poem. So she has to bear an enormous emotional burden associated with Odysseus’ absence. For a start, she doesn’t know whether her husband is alive or dead. He’s been gone for 20 years. There’s been this enormous war between the Greeks and the Trojans, and then obviously, a perilous journey back home. So she has no idea if he’s going to even come back alive, or if he does, what kind of state he’ll be in if he does return to her. We see this, I think, really powerfully in the scene where she’s coming down to listen to the Bard Phemius telling stories of how the other heroes of the Trojan War have returned home and what they’ve been doing since the war. She’s desperate for news of Odysseus. We’re talking about an ancient society where news doesn’t travel fast like it does in the modern world. There’s no modern communication. There’s no mobile phones, no way of finding out what’s going on, other than these kind of stories that get passed down. So when we see Penelope coming down to try and hear a story about what might have happened to Odysseus, you get that sense of almost desperation to know what’s going on and to have some kind of comfort or some kind of confirmation as to whether her husband is alive or dead. We also see Penelope weeping quite often in the poem. She’s lying awake at night, crying. And she says the worry is crowd into her mind. And I think that’s quite a relatable experience, probably, for most people. Although this is a poem set in the distant past and in a kind of mythological past, that’s a very present image, isn’t it, sort of lying in bed at night, worries crowding into your mind, kind of building up and up. And you don’t know what to do about a situation. It has that kind of overwhelming feeling. And she’s also in a really difficult situation. Besides not knowing what’s happening with Odysseus, she has these suitors in her home, these men who are trying to marry her, essentially, but also who are really abusing the hospitality of the household. So they’re being really obnoxious. They’re being very badly behaved. They’re using up the household’s resources. And she’s got this dilemma, really. She doesn’t know whether she should marry one of these horribly behaved suitors or whether she should carry on waiting and hoping that Odysseus is going to come back. So she’s also got a lot of weight on her shoulders, I think. There’s a lot at stake in that decision that she has to make.

So Penelope really doesn’t have it easy, does she? She’s got all those practical challenges to deal with while she’s coping on her own, but also, of course, all the emotional turmoil that you’ve talked about while Odysseus is away. How does her experience and the way she deals with it compare with that of her husband, do you think?

Well, one of the things that I think is really interesting about Penelope and Penelope’s relationship with Odysseus is, as I mentioned earlier, she has this cunning that is kind of equal to her husband. And in a lot of ways, actually. The poem suggests that Odysseus and Penelope are-- they have an equal partnership. The poet uses this word ‘homophrosyne’ to describe them, which could be translated as something like likemindedness. They share a way of seeing the world. They share a way of thinking. And so I think that one of the things that I really like about Penelope as a character is she has access to that same kind of intellect and resourcefulness that Odysseus does. She’s not just lamenting and weeping. She’s also trying to find solutions. She’s interrogating the problem. She’s asking questions about it, seeking information, in ways that are really similar to the way that we see Odysseus treating problems that he encounters in his journey. So I think it’s really interesting to see how Odysseus and Penelope, even when they’re apart from each other, which they are, obviously, for most of the poem, share this likemindedness, this kind of way of approaching problems and using their resourcefulness in attempts to solve them.

So I think we really get a sense here, Christine, that Odysseus might be the one who has all the adventures and who comes home with lots of exciting tales to tell. But I think the quiet persistence of Penelope in the face of a very different set of challenges makes her just as worthy of our attention. And it’s really just the case that we have to look a little more carefully to find her and to hear about her experiences in the poem.

I completely agree. I think Penelope is such an interesting character if we take the time to actually look at her and see what she’s doing in the poem.

Absolutely. This has been really interesting. Thank you very much for talking to me today, Christine.

You’re welcome!