1
3
Final paper
Compare The Portrayal Of Penelope And Telemachus In The Odyssey To That Of Clytemnestra And Orestes In The Oresteia. What Do These Portrayals Tell Us About Gender Dynamics In Ancient Greece?
In The Odyssey, Penelope and Clytemnestra are women facing the same challenge of succumbing to or fending off predatory suitors when their husbands are absent. Penelope is the wife of King Odysseus, and Telemachus is their son, while Clytemnestra is the wife of Agamemnon, famously known for his prowess and courage in combat, and Orestes is their son. Homer shows a significant difference in the portrayal of Penelope, Telemachus, Clytemnestra, and Orestes. Penelope is portrayed as a strong, honest, and faithful wife, while Clytemnestra is unfaithful and weak. For instance, Penelope does not give in to the demands of the suitors to marry her in the absence of her husband, whom people believe is already dead, but Clytemnestra gives in and gets married to Agamemnon’s cousin, Aegisthus. Queen Penelope employs clever tactics to misguide his suitors into thinking she will choose one of them but does not choose any;
“The suitors want to push me into marriage,
but I spin schemes. Some god first prompted me
to set my weaving in the hall and work
A long fine cloth. I said to all my suitors,
‘Although Odysseus is dead, postpone
requests for marriage till I finish weaving
this sheet to shroud Laertes when he dies.
My work should not be wasted, or the people
in Argos will reproach me, if a man
who won such wealth should lie without a shroud.’
They acquiesced. By day I wove the web,
and in the night by torchlight, I unwove it.
I tricked them for three years; long hours went by
and days and months,”
(Homer, Odyssey. Book 19. 429-138 Translated by Emily Wilson, W. W. Norton & Company. 2018)
What follows is Penelope being accused of how she is cunning and keeping suitors with the hope of marrying one day. For three to four years, Penelope has been promising the young suitors to go slowly and keenly because they will marry her very soon since her husband, King Odysseus is no more. This section shows how Penelope has never believed that King Odysseus is dead and wants to continue being faithful to him despite being told by people around her and convinced to get a suitor because her husband is dead. Penelope is an unsung heroine; she can keep the suitors away until her wily husband returns to Ithaca. For over twenty years, Odysseus was away, and she raised their son Telemachus alone until he became an adult. She was in a difficult situation as there was no one to protect her from the suitors demanding her hand in marriage because her son had not matured enough or had the energy to fight for her mother. Her son would sit among the suitors, angry and feeling defeated, but he could not tell them off. The clever deception Penelope was using on her suitors was revealed. Antinous exposes the deception by warning Telemachus not to blame the suitors because it is his mother who is entertaining the suitors by deceiving them every day. Penelope was accused of weaving a shroud of the great funeral for Laertes, her father-in-law, and using this excuse to avoid picking a husband from the suitors who presented themselves.
Weaving shroud was a great ruse by Penelope to keep away the suitors as that was the only way to protect herself from being married again. She would weave during the day to distance herself from the pestering suitors. In ancient Greece, it was morally wrong to marry or pester a woman while weaving for a great funeral. The customs of the land did not allow any woman in such a condition to be respected. Penelope used this trick to keep the suitors waiting as she would weave during the daytime, unravel the progress at night, and repeat the circle the following day. Weaving shrouds for dead people was supposed to be about three months, but Penelope took three to four years to deceive the suitors and keep them at bay. Penelope also had a wry sense of destiny in organizing the bow and axes and promised that the suitor who would pass the test would marry her. After being in captivity for twenty years, Odysseus returned to Ithaca as a beggar, and Penelope suspected that beggar might be Odysseus. She knew if indeed that beggar was Odysseus would win the contest because that was his usual game. Therefore, these traits show how Penelope was different from other women and, as a queen, stayed away from infidelity during his husband’s absence until he returned to Ithaca.
Unlike Penelope, Clytemnestra does not protect herself from infidelity, and when her husband, Agamemnon, goes to war, she marries Aegisthus and moves in with him. The life of Agamemnon was full of challenges, and he was forced to make difficult decisions. When he was leading the Greek’s most significant contingent at Troy and serving as the army commander of Greek, his hunting skills were the best, and he angered the goddess Artemis who sent retribution in the form of wind. Agamemnon had to make a difficult decision for the goddess to be pleased and reverse the curse. That decision saw her daughter, Iphigenia, dead as he offered her to the gods as a sacrifice, and the Greeks continued with the sail. At home, Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra, became understandably enraged and started loathing her husband due to their daughter’s death. As a result, she murders her husband, the hero of the Trojan war, Agamemnon, in trying to avenge her daughter’s death.
“The ghost
of Agamemnon answered, “Lucky you,
cunning Odysseus: you got yourself
a wife of virtue—great Penelope.
How principled she was, that she remembered
her husband all those years! Her fame will live
forever, and the deathless gods will make
a poem to delight all those on earth
about intelligent Penelope.
Not like my wife—who murdered her own husband!
Her story will be hateful; she will bring
bad reputation to all other women,
even the good ones.”
(Homer, Odyssey. Book 24. 513-191 Translated by Emily Wilson, W. W. Norton & Company. 2018)
What followed is Agamemnon’s telling his story among the dead. He accuses his wife, Clytemnestra, of not allowing him to see his son when he returns from war. He praises Odysseus’ wife, Penelope, for she stood the test of time when her husband went to war and did not fall into the trap of the suitors. He feels suitable for Odysseus, who will go home and meet his fully grown boy while he leaves the boy as an infant. He wishes his wife had a wry sense of destiny like Penelope, who knew what she wanted and had to wait until her husband returned. This section shows that Clytemnestra killed her husband for two accounts. First, she wanted to stay with her Aegisthus, and second, she was revenging for the death of her daughter, Iphigenia, whom Agamemnon offered as a sacrifice to save the rest of the crew and military from losing their lives. Thus, he feels women should never be trusted, as he trusted his wife and killed him before he could even reach home and see his son.
Telemachus and Orestes are portrayed as sons of kings and people whose fathers went to the trojan war and left them under the care of their mothers. The only difference is that Orestes is fighting to end an ancestral curse eating their family, while Telemachus has no curse to deliver her family from. Telemachus feels sorry for her mother, who has to deceive the many suitors in their compound and wants a hand in marriage with her. At the same time, Orestes accepts Aegisthus as his mother’s companion when his father is away. Even though Antinous wants to taint Penelope’s image before her son, Telemachus does not defy her mother and decides to look for his father to know if he is alive or dead. Orestes feels hurt when his brave, powerful, and courageous father, Agamemnon, is murdered by his mother with the help of Aegisthus, Clytemnestra’s paramour. In retaliation, Orestes kills his mother and Aegisthus and delivers the family the curse.
In Greek mythology, women appear subordinate in the lives of men, and men have authority over women’s lives. Masculinity and gender roles are evident in the portrayal of Penelope and Telemachus and the case of Clytemnestra and Orestes. Even though Telemachus is young, he exerts control over the mother and harshly commands her to go to bed. He also protects his mother from the suitors, who are about to turn violent after being kept waiting for three to four years by his mother. The idea of Telemachus first learning that it is his father who returned and bonding with him before her mother knew shows how women are subordinate to men and have to depend on men’s actions. Agamemnon says that the days of trusting women are forever gone, and this is after trusting his wife, and she killed him. Women are portrayed as people who cannot be trusted, as they can turn against anyone anytime. Orestes feels what her mother did was wrong, and he kills her to erase the curse disturbing the family.
Works Cited
Homer, Emily R. Wilson and Homer, The Odyssey. New York; London, W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.