Odysseus & Penelope – a meeting of wiles

This classic story keeps on giving. Emily Wilson has given us not only a new translation of the 3,000 years old “Odyssey”, the first by an American woman, but also an introductory essay in the New Yorker. In the intro, she addresses several aspects of how women were treated in ancient Greece and specifically whether Penelope can be viewed as an ‘empowered woman’.

It is hardly surprising that women were frequently and casually abused back then, behavior codified in law and societal norms, as they have been mostly up till the present day. The fact that ‘gender-fluid’ Athena (as Ms Wilson describes her) was powerful and successful in protecting her pet Odysseus should, I think, count little in this situation; Athena was a god, and what gods do is not relevant to mortals (though their status may reflect an ‘ideal’ condition not fully acknowledged by the mortal author and admired and honored only unconsciously by the listeners and readers).

So what about the trick? No, not the trick Penelope pulled on the ignoble suitors, keeping them waiting for her ‘hand’ (actually, her dominion) while she wove a burial cloth for her husband during the day and unraveled it at night. The real ‘trick’ was when she fooled ‘wily Odysseus’, her husband, into revealing his feelings about her. Odysseus had kept his cool through a couple decades of war and travel. But when Penelope hinted that their bed’s post, a living olive tree, had been cut, he had a melt down! He gained control of himself after a few sentences, but those were enough to let her know he cared about more than just reclaiming his land: he was also claiming her.

Perhaps by some modern standards, that may not earn her the badge ‘empowered woman’, but by god that was a pretty empowering and ‘wily’ trick – and probably reminded old Odysseus more than anything elso of just why he had praised like-minded (“homophrosyne”) couples and found her so attractive way back when, and now. Pretty empowering stuff.

Another fascinating aspect of this new translation/interpretation is the killing of the suitor’s ‘consorts’, female slaves who had consorted with the suitors. I must admit that the unfairness and the especially the brutality of their killing, practically a slow strangulation, had eluded me before now. The observation that Penelope was told by her son to 'shut up', according to the expert translators, is overdramatized, I think (FWIW), because she was empowered amply to practically order the that the bow be put into Odysseus' hands, which led to the ultimate 'show down' in the Ithaca corral.