Admirable Women In The Odyssey

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While I agree with the statement that Penelope is a woman to admire, even by today's standards, up to a point, I cannot accept the overriding assumption that today's standards would still consider her admirable. I agree with the fact Penelope acts as a commendable woman as she proves her loyalty, patience, and cleverness while waiting for her husband to return. However, this admiration should not continue to today. Currently, a woman should appear strong, independent, and able to move on in life. Penelope does not have any of these qualities, therefore today's society can not view her as admirable, only in the time of The Odyssey.

Through loyalty, cleverness, and patience, Penelope showed her admirable traits at the time in which The Odyssey …show more content…

Currently, people would expect a woman to move on in life if she has not heard from her husband in twenty years. They would tell her to stop mourning over Odysseus and assume he has either died or also moved on. According to modern expectations, Penelope must show her independence to gain respect from others by remarrying or staying single. She spends a great deal of time weeping over her lost husband, as she described to all her maids, “Is there a woman of my time whom Zeus has treated worse than me? I had a husband years ago, the best and bravest of the Danaans, a lion-hearted man, famous from Hellas to the heart of Argos. That husband I have lost” (Homer 59). Here Penelope explains her grief of losing her honorable and strong husband and bemoans how cruelly Zeus has treated her by removing her husband from her life twenty years ago. Today's society would view this attitude as weak. Not only could people today see Penelope as dependent and weak, but also lacking the skill of standing up for herself. Normally standards recently would expect a woman to stand up for herself and tell suitors to leave. However, Penelope displays a lack of assertiveness by letting her suitors eat her food and wreck her house instead of telling them to leave until she has made a decision about

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