Free Essays on Homer's Odyssey: Powerful Women of Homer’s Odyssey

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The Powerful Women of Homer’s Odyssey

There is really no way to generalize the women in Homer’s Odyssey because they all have their own distinct traits that make each of them great, strong, and powerful women. A very powerful woman is Arete. She is as powerful as the king, Alcinous. Her daughter Nausicaa is an amazing woman, even though she is so young. She displays great intelligence in handling Odysseus. These women I speak of above are great women in a good sort of way but there are also some very bad women that still have some amazing qualities. For instance Clytemnestra who has great vengeance and deceit. Another Homeric women that breaks the mold is Helen. She is so independent and headstrong it’s almost scary. These qualities I’m applying to all these women are not their only but they are the most memorable. In fact some of them share the traits I have already laid out. One other thing I would like to mention before I go on is how different these women are from what I expected. I thought they would all be weak and completely under the control of the heroic men but all the ones I’ve mentioned are very powerful and could probably do with out their men. I know Helen would be all right with out Menelaus.

Helen is extremely independent and fairly evil. For the most part only does what she wants to do. First off she ran away with Paris and started the Trojan war. Now I know it’s said that Paris took her but I would beg to differ. The best example I have is the horse story Menelaus tells Telemecus. It begins with the men in the Trojan horse waiting to ambush the city, and Helen walked around it “Three times..... / feeling, and stroking its flanks, / challenging all the fighters, calling each by name -” (Hom. 4. 310-312). What Helen wanted to do was blow the Greeks cover and help the Trojans win the war. This also shows how smart she is because the Greeks had been away from there wives for ten years and were getting a little lonely. Homer tells us that Anticlus “was hot to salute” her, but of course Odysseus had to save everyone from her (Hom. 4.320). This whole story gives a lot of insight to Helen and what she wanted.

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