Penelope: The Devoted and Clever Wife in The Odyssey

Through the telling of Homer’s epic, “The Odyssey,” Homer goes to great lengths to portray the personality of Penelope. Penelope, Odysseus’s devoted and patient wife, is most impressively shown by her determination in waiting almost twenty years for the homecoming of her husband from the Trojan War, rather than losing optimism and marrying another. She seems to be discouraged in the opening books of the epic, as she has to worry about the safety of her son Telemakhos, all the while her husband has not returned from the war and believed to be dead. To make matters worse, her palace is overrun with bigheaded suitors, killing her cattle for their feasts and consuming all of her wine, demanding that she remarries. However powerless Penelope might seem, she shares the traits of intelligence and cunningness with her husband Odysseus, which shows why these two are meant to be together.

Penelope had to endure sexual advances and perpetual annoyingness over a couple of years while looming the return of her husband. She remains the devoted and faithful wife while rebuffing the

advances of the suitors, which was no easy task. Penelope can be seen as very resourceful the way she goes to great lengths to postpone wedding any of the suitors, and Antinoos confirms this to the readers as he explains, “She had her great loom standing in the hall and the fine warp of some vast fabric on it; we were attending her, and she said to us: ‘Young men, my suitors, now my lord is dead, let me finish my weaving before I marry, or else my thread will have been spun in vain. It is a shroud I weave for Lord Laertes, when cold death comes to lay him on his bier” (Book 2, Line 102). This cunning strategy had put the men off nearly four years and she similarly had artificial promises made to each of the suitors in private in order they will not collectively require a decision from her as to who she would decide to wed.
Telemakhos had been single-handedly brought up and nurtured by Penelope alone.

Odysseus had morals and ideologies, including a strong allegiance to his country, and Penelope instilled Odysseus’s way of thinking into her son. Without her enduring faithfulness, Odysseus quite possibly would not have a home to return to. The maids of the palace demonstrated a lack of this faithfulness by having sex with the suitors. Treating your guests with hospitality is crucial in Greek mythology and viewed as a symbol for civilization. However, when Odysseus had been disguised as a beggar, a footstool was thrown at him, while being insulted by suitors and Penelope’s own maids. Unlike those characters, Penelope herself presents compassion and goodwill upon her guests and we see this in the kind manner she treated Odysseus when believed to be a beggar. Few other characters in the epic possess the same

attributes.
Penelope’s character is strong and her personality remains consistent throughout the epic, which cannot be said about many other characters. Odysseus views his wife as the ideal wife, which remains faithful to him regardless of how long he has been gone and no matter the amount of times he has been unfaithful to her. Penelope does fulfill this wish and helps prove the point that behind every great man stands a greater woman.