Check out his "Character Analysis" for all the dirt on tricky Odysseus. Well, he and Penelope must have been the original power couple , because this lady has some tricks of her own. The endless weaving is only the first; at the end of the epic, she devises a plot to get rid of the suitors: making them string Odysseus' bow and shoot and arrow through 12 axe heads, when everyone knows that Odysseus is the only guy who can do that. And when he finally reveals himself to her, she's got one more trick up her sleeve: testing him to make sure he knows a secret about their bed.
It seem like Odysseus has met his match with this one. He knows it, too. More than anything else, Penelope seems to represent home. She sure spends a lot of time there, and not even in the public spaces. Eumaios describes her as waiting for Odysseus "with enduring heart" in the palace" She's waiting upstairs, refusing to go alone into the "great hall" with the men: "I think that immodest" But when Odysseus finally comes home, she's not so modest: Odysseus "wept as he held his lovely wife, whose thoughts were virtuous … and she could not let him go from the embrace of her white arms" All we hear later is that they "gladly went together to bed, and their old ritual" She may be a modest lady in the great hall, but she's a very willing wife in the bedroom.
Like we said, she's perfect. Penelope's cleverness, excellent household management, and apparently innate sense of modesty make her ancient Greece's ideal woman. She's less of a real person than a type, someone for all you ladies out there to model yourselves on.
What are you waiting for? Get out that distaff and start spinning. Saying that Penelope was knitting, however, does more than introduce an anachronism. It also destroys the symbolism of what she is doing; weaving locks multiple threads together into one piece of fabric, while knitting, in its simplest form, just turns the yarn back on itself. Knitting likewise now brings to mind an image of something that can easily be tossed into a bag and taken anywhere, not an activity that kept Penelope tied to the same spot, walking back and forth in front of her loom, for the four years of her dolos.
The idea that Penelope is knitting instead of weaving, even though it may temporarily make the story seem more vivid, introduces an anachronism and destroys the symbolism of her weaving. Back to the Meeting Program. When Odysseus defends his marriage, he does so against the offer of marriage to a goddess.
Immortality comes with this offer. This attempt to have something lasting and stable, but still transient and mortal may offer some form of compromise with the pressure that time exerts on our thinking.
For it is not just the suitors that put Penelope on the clock. It is her mortality also. Loyalty to a person can lose its substance if that person no longer exists. And her Odysseus may be dead or so changed as to no longer be hers. Even if this is not the case, there is a cost to loyalty. The dog was bred by Odysseus and he is its master and it has clung to life loyally, it has waited twenty years to die only when its master returns.
But they have not shared life with one another. How much better off Penelope is may just be a fortunate accident of her span of life. She has chosen to remain loyal to this thought even though aware of its inadequate founding. We can see this in the way that she comes to recognize that her Odysseus has returned.
It is unlike the other recognition scenes. A distinctive scar may be enough to mark an individual as singular, or performance of a feat that only he can do may be enough. But this is not how Penelope recognizes that her Odysseus has come back.
When she pretends to order that their immovable marriage bed be moved, Odysseus responds with strong anger. It is his emotional response not his knowledge of the details of a material secret that convinces Penelope that her Odysseus is back. The marriage of these two, impressive and inspiring as it is, exists primarily in the realm of thought and feeling.
And thus it is fragile; if Odysseus had not returned when he did, waiting for his return would not have been the best choice. But the fragility of such a marriage does not mean the marriage is not a real thing. We can and do live substantially within our thoughts. Since this is our situation, we should take as much care as we can regarding the quality of our thinking.
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