A Character Study Of Penelope In Homer's Odyssey

In Homer’s Odyssey, women, particularly Penelope, are depicted in a positive light and are seen as innocent and faithful beings. Odysseus hadn’t returned home for nearly twenty years after having left to fight in the Trojan War, and Penelope, after waiting so long for her husband to arrive, had let a lot of potential suitors reside in their palace with the perceived intention of one day picking one of them to marry. However, Penelope tells them that she needs to finish making a burial shroud for Ulysses. She works hard on making the shroud during the day, but is “studious of delay” as “by night [she] [reverses] the labors of the day” (The Odyssey p.g 31). In other words, she’s been making the burial shroud for nearly three years and it has taken her so long because she keeps undoing her progress each night, i.e. …show more content…
This shows her strong-mindedness and loyalty to Odysseus, as even though she has had to endure two decades without him, she still loves him dearly and doesn’t want to pick someone to replace him or go into another relationship, even though she is being heavily pressured by the suitors to do so. In addition, this act of never finishing the burial shroud shows the depiction of Penelope as clever, as she finds an intricate way of stalling that has tricked the suitors for a while. Her cleverness is also shown near the end of the book when she is still doubtful that the man claiming to be Odysseus is really her husband, so she orders Eurycleia to move their bed. This was a test, as the bed isn’t humanly possible to move and the real Odysseus would know