Essay: Homer’s The Odyssey – loyalty

Loyalty, as epitomized by Penelope in Homer’s The Odyssey, is the most fundamental virtue that every woman is expected to possess. For any family to be successful, a woman needs to be loyal to her partner; but so does a man. If such is not the case, if this idea of reciprocity is in some ways compromised, our present societal values that are built upon millennia of careful philosophical debates will no longer be superior to those of Bronze Age peoples. The debates were, and still are, about ‘equality’ between the two sexes that are the same, with the exception of some basic physical features. Today, arguments like this have been settled decisively in favor of whoever is least-advantaged, in this case, women. But some few thousand years ago, during the times of Homer, the social structure was very different. The degree of privilege, which entails authority and social position, was skewed towards the advantages of men. The perspective of women was warped in such a way that the idea of nobility of character in them meant submitting to authority and repressing their instinctual desires, for example, lust, wealth, and vengeance. Most of the women in The Odyssey complied to this notion; few found it suspicious.
D.S. Carne-Ross, in his introduction to Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of The Odyssey, wrote, “in The Iliad women play a small though memorable part; in The Odyssey they are everywhere—even the man-eating sea devil Skylla is female” (Fitzgerald, ii). Indeed, Homer’s second work contains a fair amount of women whose lives are depicted in context of the prevailing Greek society; with that, we can get a more complete version of how they compared in relation to men. The first impression of women is given by the way how Telemachus acts with his Penelope, his mother, when she asks Phemius to choose another song, because hearing about Troy “afflicts the dear heart” of her (Homer, 1.341). Telemachus, rather disgruntled by her statement,  says, “go therefore back into the house, and take up your own work, the loom and the distaff, and see to it that your handmaidens ply their work also; but the men must see to the discussion, all men, but I most of all. For mine is the power in this household” (Homer, 21.350-54). This patriarchal arrogance, was neither unacceptable nor uncommon during this time in Greek history. In the sixth book of Iliad, Hector tells his wife Andromache that wars are the concerns of men, and as he dies with glory and pride, she shall live “far off in the land of Argos, laboring at a loom, at another woman’s back and call, fetching water at some spring” (Homer, 6.542-43). What else can a woman do? They are weak; they can’t fight, plough the field, design a raft, or build a city. They are supposed to do what they can—tend to basic household chores.
Male and female roles, in Greek society, were sharply distinguished and regulated in such a way that one doesn’t infringe upon  the roles of the other. Men were adamant about their position; women had no other choice than to submit and accept their role as subordinates. Also, why the fuss about the ‘loom’? Almost every female character in The Odyssey works on some kind of a loom. Helen comes out of her bedroom looking like “Artemis of the golden distaff,” Circe goes “up and down a great design on a loom,” and Calypso does the same but with a “golden shuttle” (Homer 4.122, 10.221-22, 5.62). But why? Why are they portrayed doing works like that? Prof. Helen Whittaker in her Gender Roles in the Odyssey answers this very question with an explanation: “Women of the upper class are most often described as being busy at the loom or other form of textile work. This is the reflection of the fact that all the linen and clothing used by the members of the oikos [family] was produced in the home” (Whittaker, ch. 3). However, in The Odyssey the act of working in the loom was used to describe the virtue of a Greek women as portrayed by Helen and Penelope, and also as a tool to deceive other people’s eyes into thinking that the woman is noble, like in the case of Circe and Calypso.
The kind of discrimination that the women faced during the time of Homer was implicitly fostered by men under the veil of societal responsibilities, which in this case, is symbolically represented by working at the loom. But we can see that there are some blunt derogatory comments about the women in The Odyssey that, in today’s society at least, are clearly misogynistic. When Odysseus goes to the Land of the Dead and encounters the women Tyro, Antiope, Alcmena, Megara, Epikaste, Leda (and so on), his observations centered around their sex lives and the identities of their children (Homer, 11.235-333). The greatness of women was measured not in their ‘deeds’ but in how efficiently they could function as men’s sexual partners. Women are objectified, and only serve to satisfy men’s eyes. The fact that Neleus married Chloris only because of her beauty, and that Ariadne is killed by Artemis when she ceased to provide joy for Theseus, proves how women are viewed as mere objects to satisfy men’s lower passions (Homer, 11.281-324). Homer goes on to talk about Eriphyle, describing her as the “hateful, who accepted precious gold for the life of her own dear husband” (Homer, 11.327). Women like this “splash the shame” on themselves and the rest of their sex (Homer, 11.433). But what does this say about men, who plunder villages, killing other men, and raping their wives? While this kind of activity was common for Bronze Age men, a women’s involvement in similar actions of  but what was uncommon was women involving in the same activities involving deceit, lust, and infidelity.
Moreover, within the subject of lust, one woman stands out to speak her mind: Calypso. When Hermes, as instructed by Zeus, arrives in Ogygia and asks Calypso to free Odysseus she begrudgingly complains, “you are hard-hearted, you gods, and jealous beyond all creatures beside, when you are resentful toward the goddesses for sleeping openly with such men as each has made her true husband” (Homer, 5.118-20). What she says is very true; discrimination also affects the goddesses. Mortal or a goddess, a woman is not supposed to engage in such behaviors because, if she does, she’s no longer honorable. The same is not true for men.
Calypso, however, forthrightly speaks about how she feels about it and is transparent about what she wants. But not just Calypso, Circe also speaks openly about what she wants with a man. When Odysseus, with Hermes’ advice, manages to conquer Circe, she openly tells him, “put away your sword in its sheath, and let us two go up into my bed so that, lying together in the bed of love, we may then have faith and trust in each other”(Homer, 10.333-35). This is what I would refer to as one of the first feminist voices of the Classical era. People from Homer’s times would consider these goddesses, and their ideas, disgraceful and vile. The quality that they’d be looking for is demonstrated by Penelope, who remains chaste despite her husband’s long absence. Her loyalty makes her a ‘good woman.’ Klytaimestra, on the other hand, doesn’t remain faithful to her husband and moves on to find another lover; she is considered “sluttish” and “treacherous” (Homer, 11.411-22).
But can’t her actions be justified just as that of mens’? If men’s vile crimes, like assassination of the suitors by Odysseus, can be justified, can’t the assassination of Agamemnon by Klytaimestra also be justified, the condition being everyone is judged equally? In a just society, even though killing someone is not a good thing, the answer would be yes; it can be justified, given that Agamemnon tried to kill his own daughter for the sake of war. But Homer would definitely consider her a “reverse mirror image” of Penelope and so would the people of his era (Whittaker, ch. 5). Yes, what Klytaimestra did was horrible. Yes, Penelope would still be an ideal sought-after woman today. But when we’re in a debate about the equality amongst men and women, the standards for what is righteous or sinful should apply to both parties equally. For us, me personally, these prejudices and biases towards women are hard to swallow— especially since we’re past the 20th century revolutionary phase of women’s rights. But back then the circumstances were different, and yet the ideas of few unremitting women of The Odyssey, however disgrace might they be in their times, provide the groundwork for the struggle towards women’s liberation of the present era.