Odyssey Thingy Case

The Odyssey is one of the most famous pieces of literature from ancient Greece, written by Homer, because of Odysseus’ journey but what about the women in the book? Do they have any specific roles? How are they portrayed? One of the major themes of the book is that the women are treated inferiorly. Penelope, the Seireines and Kalypso are prime examples of the females not being treated equally as the men, and are almost always depicted in a negative manner. The females in the story are not as privileged as the males because of the society in which Homer wrote this story. The Odyssey was written in the 700s BCE in a Greek society which emphasized patriarchy, and the women in the book are a resemblance of what life was like at the time period.

One of the most important women in The Odyssey is Penelope, Odysseus’ wife and the queen of Ithaka. As the queen of Ithaka, she is treated very poorly and below the men of her household, as shown in the Penelopiad, “To add to my misery, Telemachus [Telemakhos] was now of an age to start ordering me around. I’d run the palace affairs almost single-handedly for twenty years, but now he wanted to asser! [assert] his authority as the son of Odysseus and take over the reins.” (Atwood 22). Penelope is his mother and she is more knowledgeable about the household, yet Telemakhos was the one who held power in the house. Telemakhos took over power because he was “the man of the house” and in a patriarchal society he had the right to hold power. In addition to taking over the household, he also orders his mother around, “Return to your own hall. Tend your spindle. / Tend your loom. Direct your maids at work. / This question of the bow will be for men to settle, most of all for me. / I am master here.” (Fitzgerald Book XXI. 402). Telemakhos is disrespecting his mother and orders her to retreat to her room while the men, who are of higher rank than women, took the “test of the bow”. In another point of The Odyssey, Athena enters the household and addresses Telemakhos to go and search for his father but never addresses Penelope at all, “If I were you, / I should take steps to make these men disperse… / and go abroad for news of your lost father…” (Fitzgerald Book I. 10). When Athena enters the household, she directly addresses Telemakhos about his father, Odysseus, but she never mentions it to Penelope. As the wife of Odysseus, Penelope should be the one to be searching for her loved one, yet Athena puts the task on the son’s shoulders because he is the man and a woman shouldn’t be leaving the house. Throughout The Odyssey, Penelope is treated as a lesser being than the men as shown by others’ actions towards her.

During The Odyssey, Odysseus encounters the Seireines while sailing from Aiaia, Kirke’s island, towards Ithaka. The Seireines are a group of women who are on Anthemoessa, the island which the Seireines reside on. The Seireines have stunning voices to lure the

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