Just finished a great book, literary criticism on the Odyssey (library book). It gave me a whole new set of ways to look at the story; I’ll have to re-read it when I finally unpack it. That’s what good literary criticism does for me; it makes me want to go back to the original and get that broader, deeper, richer understanding of the story.
It also – and this is an aside – sometimes makes me feel that people shouldn’t read real literature until they’re in college, at least. So many things that I read in HS – I think I’ve read them, but then something like this comes along and shows me just how much I missed since I didn’t have any experience or perspective. And if I don’t know to re-read the book, I’ll just miss all that detail.
So .. to the book ..
There is a whole lot of literary criticism of the Odyssey and of Homeric literature in general, and in general I haven’t read it. So there’s a lot that’s already been written about Penelope…some more insightful than others. For me, I guess I have ignored her character, passing over her in a way, though I would have denied it. First, and this is probably because I read it without so much though, I failed to see the story through her perspective. I know Odysseus is coming home, and while I know she doesn’t know that, I never really thought it through and took her seriously when she said, over and over and over, that she knows he is dead. That just passed over my head. The second and somewhat related overlook is that Penelope has been (by me and many, many others) identified primarily by her everlasting fidelity of Odysseus.
But, as this book points out, it is so much more and so much deeper than that. It shows how those assumptions only arise when you, the reader, don’t really take her seriously. When she says I believe Odysseus is dead, I have only been keeping this together as I’ve waited for our son to mature and take possession, I am now accepting proposals and will marry whoever strings the bow … when you, the reader, push statements like that aside because they don’t match the faithful patient idealized wife-in-waiting; when you don’t take her seriously then she really devolves into very little. But when you take her at her word, work through why she would say and think and behave that way, then suddenly you realize just what she’s been facing for 20 years, the balancing act she’s played, and how much the story is in praise of her as much as of Odysseus.
Which makes a lot of other things about the story make sense, and which makes the story so much richer and more interesting. With these new insights, I have so much more respect for and interest in the tale – and in Homer, actually. There’s the surficial story, the homecoming and the big fight at the end. But there’s more, there’s the understory, there’s Penelope.
Really good book.
On Amazon, at Taking Her Seriously: Penelope and the Plot of Homer’s Odyssey
I’ll admit I haven’t read the Odyssey. The book has been sitting in my list of books I should probably read someday.
Still, I don’t think there is anyone that doesn’t know the basic story. These insights are interesting. I never knew she thought/believed her husband was dead; her waiting becomes much more interesting knowing that.
Of course, I say that it was HS that I read things I didn’t get … but really, the great literature, I think I should just re-read every 10 years or so. The really great stuff bears – scratch that, rewards – constant repitition.
When we, the modern audience, come to the Odyssey, we already know the characters, as you’ve said – Penelope weaving and unweaving that shroud, waiting hopefully and patiently and holding off all the suiters. And since we, the readers, know that Odysseus is alive and coming back, we tend to put weight into that thought that she at least believes or has faith in it – we want to believe that she is waiting for what we know will happen.
But on closer examination ……
When Odysseus leaves (unwillingly) for the Trojan War, he tells Penelope point blank that there’s a good chance he won’t come back. He charges her to keep the household together until their infant son matures, at which point – if he’s not back – she is to assume he has died, give the property/land/position of leadership to the mature Telemachus, and then marry someone else – basically to hand over the reins and then get out of the way.
So .. 10, 15 years pass, the heros of the Trojan War are all home or coming home, and there’s no sight, sound, report, or anything about Odysseus. He sails away from Troy and no one hears anything else about him or his ship. No one knows that Circe – with Posiden’s help – have trapped Odysseus and all his crew on that island.
What everyone does know is that he’s not home, and he’s not coming home. The suiters descend. But Telemachus is only 10, 15, and he’s not ready. Out comes the shroud. Odysseus’s mother dies of grief, Penelope tacitly acknowledges that he’s not coming back and starts the last wifely duty, that of providing for her father-in-law’s burial. But what she’s doing is giving her son time to grow up.
She’s finally discovered – 5 years is a long time to work on a shroud. But Telemachus is now 20, technially a man though not exaclty mature (Penelope knows this, but motherly insight is no match for law & chronology). And the suiters, who have been held at bay by this bit of weaving for 5 years, get the gist of things, and they decide to start in on the estate. They figure out that Penelope’s holding out for Telemachus’ sake, not for Odysseus, who is now 20 years gone, 10 years gone after the end of the war.
So the suiters start feasting, carousing, and generally using up the inheritance that Penelope has been safeguarding for Telemachus. They force her hand. So now – she’s supposed to hand things over to him, he’s not ready but he’s technically old enough, and the longer she waits the less there will be to hand over. And even though the general population has come to admire her ‘fidelity’, she realizes that she must give that up; damage her own reputation to ensure the standing of her son.
She doesn’t like any of the suiters. In fact, over the last 10 years, she’s really come to despise the lot of them. And she does miss and grieve for Odysseus, to the point where she’d really rather just be alone. After all, she’s been managing things for 20 years. She’s pretty good at it. But now she’s boxed into a corner, and she has to do what she hates and what everyone will hate her for, just for the good of her son.
This is the substory that I totally missed. It was all there, nothing in the book I just read was unknown, but I hadn’t thought any of it through. But seeing it all laid out for me – well, it helped me see what had been there all the time. And it shows how much more interesting and perilous Penelope’s situation had been. And the timing! When you go into it thinking that Penelope’s just lying, has been and always will be, that she’s just telling the suiters anything and everything to hold them at bay, then there’s really no suspense at the end. Her statement that she’ll marry whoever strings the bow, or whoever matches the next challenge, or the next, is just another ploy. But, no, she’s serious, the time had come, and if Odysseus had been another week late she would have been married off. When you have the second half of the story, suddenly there’s real suspense.
It really was an excellent little book of literary criticism/analysis.
I have never read the Odyssey, though i tried once when i was very young and saw it only as an old and rather ridiculous hero tale. I do, though, know the general story. I knew about Penelope and never understood the big deal… why praise her fidelity when her husband is dead? Why the big deal when she did decide to marry? I did catch on that she didn’t want to, and was doing so to save her son’s inheritance.
It is interesting to read what you have written here and see the understory, which is far more compelling than the surface story.