What women could do, and what the poem shows them doing.
Homeric society was run by men in public, and women’s sphere was the household. The Odyssey takes its women seriously as agents while showing very clearly the limits placed on them, and in the Telemachy their power works through the household, through marriage, through private speech and, above all, through intelligence.
1.14 Calypso from 1.44 Athene in council 1.243–244 sending Penelope home from 1.372 Eurycleia at bedtime Penelope and the bard (workbook lines 284–319)
Have your Book 1 workbook open alongside this page. Quotations on this page give the workbook’s own line numbers.
Homeric society was run by men in public. The assembly in Book 2 is entirely male, and kings, warriors, bards and hosts are men. When Telemachus tells his mother that speech in the hall is men’s business, he is stating a rule everyone present accepts.
Women’s sphere was the oikos, the household: its stores, its servants, its weaving, and the raising of children. Women in the poem still have power, but it works differently: through the household, through marriage, through speech in private and, above all in the Telemachy, through intelligence. The Odyssey takes women seriously as agents while showing very clearly the limits placed on them.
Common mistake. Students often call Penelope passive because she waits. In her situation waiting is an active choice, sustained for twenty years against constant pressure, and she defends it with a trick that outwits a hundred men for three of those years.
Almost every choice Penelope makes is hemmed in. She cannot remarry without accepting that Odysseus is dead. She cannot refuse the suitors outright without inviting violence against her son. She cannot leave without ending the household. What she can do is delay, and she does it brilliantly: the three-year web trick holds the suitors off by wit alone and fails only through a servant’s betrayal.
In Book 1 she is also shown being overruled. When she asks Phemius to change his song, Telemachus sends her upstairs and tells her that speech in the hall belongs to men. She goes, and the poem notes that she took his words to heart. Her son’s first act of authority is exercised over her.
Helen left her husband for a guest of the house, and ten years of fighting followed. In Book 4 she is home in Sparta, reconciled with Menelaus, gracious, intelligent and entirely at ease. She recognises Telemachus on sight, drugs the wine so that grief can be spoken of without pain, and tells a story that casts her as Odysseus’s secret ally. Her husband’s version of Troy casts her as the danger, and the poem lets both stand. Helen is the poem’s test of how far a woman can be blamed and forgiven at once.
Seduced by Aegisthus while her husband was at Troy, Clytemnestra is the wife who did not wait. Nestor remarks in Book 3 that she was a woman of good sense until Aegisthus wore her down. She is the standing warning of what Penelope’s situation could have become: the anti-Penelope.
Eurycleia was bought as a girl by Odysseus’s father Laertes, who honoured her like a wife but never slept with her, to spare his own wife’s anger. She lights Telemachus to bed in Book 1 from 1.372, folds his clothes, and is the one person he swears to silence before he sails in Book 2. Even her short biography is defined by marriage and its rules, and her standing rests entirely on service and loyalty.
Against the mortal women stand female gods who act under none of the same constraints. Athene travels where she likes, disguises herself as men, sits in the divine council and argues with Zeus, and drives the entire plot of the Telemachy. Calypso holds the poem’s hero captive for seven years by her own will. Eidothea, a sea-nymph, tells Menelaus how to trap her own father.
The contrast is pointed. A goddess speaks in council, while a queen is sent upstairs. A nymph keeps a hero, while a wife waits for one. The poem does not comment, but it puts the two kinds of female power side by side and lets the audience notice.
Key idea. Female power in the poem is either divine or indirect, and mortal women only have the indirect kind.
Book 1 moves from goddesses who act freely to mortal women who are advised about, overruled and served. Read the scenes in order and notice how the limits tighten.
The first woman named in the poem is a goddess keeping Odysseus in her cave because she wants to marry him.
Athene argues Odysseus’s case to Zeus, gets her way and sets out her plan.
As Mentes, Athene advises that if Penelope wants to marry, she should go back to her father, who will arrange it.
Veiled and attended, Penelope comes down to the hall in tears and asks Phemius for a different song.
Telemachus overrules her and sends her to her loom. She obeys and weeps for Odysseus until she sleeps.
The old nurse lights Telemachus to bed, and the poem stops to tell her history.
All the survivors of the war had reached their homes by now and so put the perils of battle and the sea behind them. Odysseus alone was prevented from returning to the home and wife he yearned for by that powerful goddess, the Nymph Calypso, who longed for him to marry her, and kept him in her vaulted cave.
Book 1, workbook lines 11–15
Before Penelope is mentioned, the audience meets female power at its least constrained.
The goddess of the flashing eyes, Athene, answered him at once: ‘Father of ours, Son of Cronos, King of Kings, Aegisthus’ end is just what he deserved. May all who act as he did share his fate! It is for Odysseus that my heart is wrung, the wise and unlucky Odysseus, who has been parted so long from all his friends and is pining on a lonely island far away in the middle of the seas. … Yet your Olympian heart is quite unmoved.’
Book 1, workbook lines 43–56
Zeus agrees that they should “contrive a plan to bring him home” (workbook lines 70–71), and Athene sets out what she will do (workbook lines 74–86). This is a woman’s voice in an assembly, and it is heard only because she is a god. In Book 2 the Ithacan assembly is entirely male.
‘Tell the Suitors to leave and go home. As for your mother, if she is set on marrying, let her go back to her father’s house. He is a man of consequence, and the family will arrange a marriage and see that she has a generous dowry, as is only right for a beloved daughter.’
Book 1, workbook lines 240–244
The mechanics of a widow’s remarriage are laid out by a god in disguise, speaking to Penelope’s son. Athene adds that if Telemachus hears his father is dead, he should “give your mother in marriage to a new husband” (workbook lines 255–256).
In her room upstairs, Penelope, the gracious daughter of Icarius, took in the words of his stirring ballad and came down from her quarters by the steep staircase, not alone, but with two waiting-women in attendance. When she came near her Suitors the great lady drew a fold of her shining veil across her cheeks and took her stand by a pillar of the massive roof, with one of her faithful maids on either side.
Book 1, workbook lines 286–293
She then bursts into tears and asks Phemius to choose another song, because this one “never fails to wring my heart” (workbook lines 295–302). This is her one public act in Book 1.
‘So go to your quarters now and attend to your own work, the loom and the spindle, and tell the servants to get on with theirs. Making decisions must be men’s concern, and mine in particular; for I am master in this house.’
Penelope was taken aback, but she retired to her own apartments, for she took her son’s sensible words to heart. Attended by her maids, she went upstairs to her bedroom, and there she wept for Odysseus, her beloved husband, till bright-eyed Athene closed her eyes in sweet sleep.
Book 1, workbook lines 311–319
He was escorted by the faithful Eurycleia, who carried a blazing torch. This Eurycleia was the daughter of Ops and granddaughter of Peisenor. Laertes had procured her at his own cost long ago, when she was still a girl, for the price of twenty oxen. He had treated her in his home with all the respect due to a loyal wife, though for fear of his wife’s displeasure he had not slept with her. It was she who now served as torch-bearer to his grandson; and she who of all the household women loved him most, for she had nursed him as a child.
Book 1, workbook lines 372–379
She then folds and hangs Telemachus’s tunic and draws the door shut behind her (workbook lines 380–385). A slave is one of the household’s most trusted members, and her standing rests entirely on service and loyalty.
| Woman | Status | While her husband was away | How the poem judges her |
|---|---|---|---|
| Penelope | Queen of Ithaca | Waited twenty years; held off the suitors by wit | Admired, and shown being overruled and out of moves |
| Helen | Queen of Sparta | Left with a guest; the war followed | Blamed and forgiven at once; allowed to tell her own version |
| Clytemnestra remembered | Queen of Mycenae | Took a lover; the returning husband was killed | Condemned, with one line of sympathy from Nestor |
| Eurycleia | Slave, nurse | Kept the household; trusted with secrets | Honoured for loyalty; defined by the men who owned her |
| Athene, Calypso | Goddesses | Act freely: council, disguise, captivity | Beyond judgement; the measure of what mortal women cannot do |
The strongest answers argue that the poem is both. It never questions the rules: men speak in the hall, wives wait, widows are sent home. Within those rules, though, it gives its women intelligence, dignity and inner life, and it lets Penelope’s cleverness match her husband’s.
It also shows a double standard without comment. Odysseus has spent seven years with Calypso and the poem never treats this as unfaithfulness. Penelope’s fidelity is the whole point of her character, and Clytemnestra’s failure of it is the poem’s deepest condemnation.
Remember. Notice the double standard without excusing it, and without pretending the poem is unaware of it.
These are positions for you to test against the text. Decide how far the text supports each one, and mark your verdict.