________________________________________________
_ If the real Odysseus, unprincipled, unchivalrous, and cruel, is anything but a hero who "adorns his age and race," must it not be conceded, at any rate, that "the unwearied fidelity of Penelope, awaiting through the long revolving years the return of her storm-tossed husband," presents, as Lecky declares (II., 279), and as is commonly supposed, a picture of perennial beauty "which Rome and Christendom, chivalry and modern civilization, have neither eclipsed nor transcended?"
We have seen that the fine words of Achilles regarding his "love" of Briseis are, when confronted with his actions, reduced to empty verbiage. The same result is reached in the case of Penelope, if we subject her actions and motives to a searching critical analysis. Ostensibly, indeed, she is set up as a model of that feminine constancy which men at all times have insisted on while they themselves preferred to be models of inconstancy. As usual in such cases, the feminine model is painted with touches of almost grotesque exaggeration. After the return of Odysseus Penelope informed her nurse (XXIII., 18) that she has not slept soundly all this time--twenty years! Such phrases, too, are used as "longing for Odysseus, I waste my heart away," or "May I go to my dread grave seeing Odysseus still, and never gladden heart of meaner husband." But they are mere phrases. The truth about her attitude and her-feelings is told frankly in several places by three different persons--the goddess of wisdom, Telemachus, and Penelope herself. Athene urges Telemachus to make haste that he may find his blameless mother still at home instead of the bride of one of the suitors.
"But let her not against your will take treasure from your home. You know a woman's way; she strives to enrich his house who marries her, while of her former children and the husband of her youth, when he is dead she thinks not, and she talks of him no more" (XV., 15-23).
In the next book (73-77) Telemachus says to the swineherd:
"Moreover my mother's feeling wavers, whether to bide beside me here and keep the house, and thus revere her husband's bed and _heed the public voice_, or finally to follow some chief of the Achaians who woos her in the hall with largest gifts."
And a little later (126) he exclaims, "She neither declines the hated suit nor has she power to end it, while they with feasting impoverish my home."
These words of Telcinachus are endorsed in full by Penelope herself, whose remarks (XIX., 524-35) to the disguised Odysseus give us the key to the whole situation and explain why she lies abed so much weeping and not knowing what to do.
" ... so does my doubtful heart toss to and fro whether to bide beside my son and keep all here in safety--my goods, my maids, and my great high-roofed house--and thus revere my husband and _heed the public voice_, or finally to follow some chief of the Achaiians who woos me in my hall with countless gifts. My son, while but a child and slack of understanding, _did not permit my marrying_ and departing from my husband's home; but now that he is grown and come to man's estate, he prays me to go home again and leave the hall, so troubled is he for that substance which the Achaiians waste."
If these words mean anything, they mean that what kept Penelope from marrying again was not affection for her husband but the desire to live up to the demands of "the public voice" and the fact that her son--who, according to Greek usage, was her master--would not permit her to do so. This, then, was the cause of that proverbial constancy! But a darker shadow still is cast on her much-vaunted affection by her cold and suspicious reception of her husband on his return. While the dog recognized him at once and the swineherd was overjoyed, she, the wife, held him aloof, fearing that he might be some man who had come to cheat her! At first Odysseus thought she scorned him because he "was foul and dressed in sorry clothes;" but even after he had bathed and put on his princely attire she refused to embrace him, because she wished to "prove her husband!" No wonder that her son declared that her "heart is always harder than a stone," and that Odysseus himself thus accosts her:
"Lady, a heart impenetrable beyond the sex of women the dwellers on Olympus gave you. There is no other woman of such stubborn spirit to stand off from the husband who, after many grievous toils, came in the twentieth year home to his native land. Come then, good nurse, and make my bed, that I may lie alone. For certainly of iron is the heart within her breast." _
Read next: Hector And Andromache
Read previous: Odysseus, Libertine And Ruffian
Table of content of Greek Love-Stories and Poems
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
