"...Her very words,
And despite our passion and pride, we believed her.
So by day she'd weave at her great and growing web--
by night, by the light of the torches set beside her,
she would unravel all she'd done. Three whole years,
she deceived us blind, seduced us with this scheme...
Then when the wheeling seasons brought the fourth year on
and the months waned and the long days came round once more,
one of the women in on the queen's secret told the truth
and we caught her in the act-- unweaving her gorgeous web."
(Homer: The Odyssey, Book 2, translated by Robert Fagles.)
This is that one point in the Odyssey where I often wonder whether it's an epic about the travels of the man of "twists and turns" or whether it rests on the moment when Penelope becomes a force that drives the narrative. Not Neptune, not the wily Odysseus, but Penelope. In other words, can we read the Odyssey as the story of a going, not a coming? Is it the story of Odysseus coming home or is it story of Penelope whose last stronghold has collapsed and who must, therefore, venture forth in order to save herself?
Here Penelope does not speak, but is spoken about-- by the suitors who have collected in the palace and who wait impatiently for her to finish weaving Laertes' burial shroud. They have been kept at bay, circling, waiting, until this tapestry that will never end is ended, and the husband she waits for is no longer awaited, and until her faith is unfaithful. This is the information that will launch Telemachus's ship and lead, in a way, to Odysseus's successful return to Ithaca. Penelope, then, inspires both speech and action in the Odyssey--something that is almost directly opposite of Chryses in the Iliad, whose presence brings silence and destruction and of Dido in the Aeneid, whose realm is a point of departure, not of arrival.
Yet, for the suitors, Penelope is none of these things-- in fact, she's almost a kind of Circe, who also weaves for the sake of deception. She doesn't turn the suitors into pigs, but in a way, the tapestry is more human for her than these unwelcome visitors are. So what do we make of her, this woman who weaves desperately to prolong her state of being and belonging? She is very much the wife of Odysseus, twisting and turning even as the "gorgeous web" takes form. But she is also the figure of self-preservation in the epic whose lie is for herself, her son, and her husband. Does she lie really, or does she just never bring herself to a point of speech? Or does she do something more complex than anyone else in the narrative by using an art form to speak for her? I think what Penelope does then should be read as a form of preserving being not only in the sense of her bond with Odysseus and Telemachus, but also as a form of preserving her bond with herself-- she transfers her narrative to the art form, something that can never be interpreted definitively.
The image up there is Joseph Wright of Derby's "Penelope Unravelling her Web," (1784). I've chosen it because of how perfectly it makes the case-- Odysseus in the background, Telemachus in the front-- her past and her future, and her ball of wool in her hand as a kind of weapon of preservation, as something that can both encapsulate what has happened, and prolong what is to be until it can be the way it should be. Until then, she will weave her own version of time.
Here Penelope does not speak, but is spoken about-- by the suitors who have collected in the palace and who wait impatiently for her to finish weaving Laertes' burial shroud. They have been kept at bay, circling, waiting, until this tapestry that will never end is ended, and the husband she waits for is no longer awaited, and until her faith is unfaithful. This is the information that will launch Telemachus's ship and lead, in a way, to Odysseus's successful return to Ithaca. Penelope, then, inspires both speech and action in the Odyssey--something that is almost directly opposite of Chryses in the Iliad, whose presence brings silence and destruction and of Dido in the Aeneid, whose realm is a point of departure, not of arrival.
Yet, for the suitors, Penelope is none of these things-- in fact, she's almost a kind of Circe, who also weaves for the sake of deception. She doesn't turn the suitors into pigs, but in a way, the tapestry is more human for her than these unwelcome visitors are. So what do we make of her, this woman who weaves desperately to prolong her state of being and belonging? She is very much the wife of Odysseus, twisting and turning even as the "gorgeous web" takes form. But she is also the figure of self-preservation in the epic whose lie is for herself, her son, and her husband. Does she lie really, or does she just never bring herself to a point of speech? Or does she do something more complex than anyone else in the narrative by using an art form to speak for her? I think what Penelope does then should be read as a form of preserving being not only in the sense of her bond with Odysseus and Telemachus, but also as a form of preserving her bond with herself-- she transfers her narrative to the art form, something that can never be interpreted definitively.
The image up there is Joseph Wright of Derby's "Penelope Unravelling her Web," (1784). I've chosen it because of how perfectly it makes the case-- Odysseus in the background, Telemachus in the front-- her past and her future, and her ball of wool in her hand as a kind of weapon of preservation, as something that can both encapsulate what has happened, and prolong what is to be until it can be the way it should be. Until then, she will weave her own version of time.
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