Role of Women in the Odyssey

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“A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view” (Ibsen). This saying also applied to the times of the Odyssey, an epic constructed by the blind, eight century B.C.E. poet, Homer. As one of the few representatives of ancient Greek social order, the blind, Homer witnessed women as substandard to men, regardless of their actions; many of them existed as seductresses, prostitutes, or slaves. He engraved into his poem women’s roles; the roles of women, as mothers, wives, seductresses, and goddesses are exemplified in this epic, when shown in comparison to the men of that era.

The mothers, throughout the Odyssey, are insistent figures that are shown to give plenty of grief and pity, instead of supporting their husbands and/or sons, as far as in quests of personal or military matters. In many of the occurrences of these figures in the story, they are the same women who need support and guidance, themselves, because they are shown to be of the fragile and timid type. Deprived of the men that, normally, are helpful in their guidance, these motherly figures are brokenhearted and have gone astray. There is an excerpt from the epic that reveals Telemachus asserting his manhood as he orders his mother, Penelope, from staying away from the rooms in the palace, occupied by the suitors, because they still have, yet, to show reason to claim his father’s throne. In another instance, Homer mentions Anticlea, the mother of Odysseus, as dying because she longed for her son, as opposed to dying from any sort of illness; these two parts show a dependency from their mothers and how devot...

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...of Agamemnon’s homecoming. However, there is still reason for doubt towards Penelope’s true intentions based on her behavior throughout her husband’s absence.

Works Cited

Ibsen, Henrik. "Women Quotes." Notable Quotes. Web. 30 June 2011. .

Lawall, Sarah N. The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. Print.

MacKay, L. A. "The Person of Penelope." Greece & Rome 2nd ser. 5.2 (1958): 123-27. JSTOR. Web. .

Olsen, S. D. "The Stories of Agamemnon in Homer's Odyssey." Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 120 (1990): 57-71. JSTOR. Web. .

Platt, Arthur. "Notes on the Odessey." The Classical Review 13.8 (1899): 382-84. JSTOR. Web. .

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