Penelope, Clytaemestra, Athena, and Helen of Homer’s Odyssey

The Ideal Women of Homer’s Odyssey

Ancient Greek society treated women as secondary citizens. Restrictions were placed on the social and domestic actions of many aristocratic women in ancient Athens. The women depicted in Homer's Odyssey, on the other hand, are the ideal. Penelope, Clytaemestra, Athena, and Helen are all women with exceptional liberty and power.

Before comparing the women of the Odyssey to those of Athens, it is beneficial to take a look into the lives of the latter. A respected woman was to have characteristics including obedience, virtue, refinement, productivity, honor, beauty, talent and intelligence (social consciousness). Sarah B. Pomeroy has studied this aspect of ancient life and discusses it in her book, Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece. She states that women from this Athenian polis (city-state) are part of their husbands' oikos. Though, these women have some power within the oikos, their primary responsibility was the procreation of sons. They held very little and most likely no political power. They lived by guidelines set by society which were fairly restrictive. They must not do tasks out of doors, for then they would become "the potential prey of rapists and seducers" (Pomeroy 21). The wife must be kept chaste and pure, and so there was a need for a slave-woman. Not only were the women not allowed outdoors, but they were not to come into contact with strangers, particularly men. For, men would vie "to win honour for themselves at the expense of other men's honour, and wives were often mere adolescents" (Pomeroy 21). These "mere adolescent" wives were not only confined in their roles as women, they were also physically confined within the walls of ...

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...ncient times. Perhaps the men were in fear that the women, were they in the position of power, would be as repressive as men. For whatever the many reasons for the situation in which the women lived, the truth holds that they are invaluable to society. There may not be a female president for some years to come, but without women in modern society, there would be no male presidents either.

Works Cited

Aeschylus. "Agamemnon." Greek Tragedies. Ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1953. 1-61.

Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1996.

Pomeroy: Pomeroy, Sarah B. Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece: Representations and Realities. New York: Oxford UP, 1997.

Pomeroy2: Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. New York: Oxford UP.