Gender roles have historically been depicted as the man being the stronger sex while females are subservient and in charge of all of taking care of men and all of their needs. Odysseus’s wife Penelope in Homer’s The Odyssey and Hisham Matar’s mother, Fawzia Tarwah in his memoir The Return are pampered wives who have to step into larger roles when their husbands are suddenly no longer present in the household. The empowering strength that each of these women has to find within themselves is contrasted by the alienating weakness that they have to face when the fate of their husbands comes to light. When Penelope’s husband sails off to war, she is thrust into the role of both King and Queen of her country, and Father and Mother to her son,
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96-101)
Penelope is not only questioning the validity of his identity, but she is hesitant in wielding power back over to him. This is a woman that has been in charge of Ithaca for 20 years. Once she accepts this man as her husband that power will be gone, and she will go back to a life as a subservient wife. In The Return the strength of author Matar Hisham’s mother Fawzia Tarwah differs from Homer’s Penelope in that Odysseus willingly went off to war. Fawzia’s husband was abducted and held captive by the Libyan government. In the wake of the abduction Fawzia found solace and strength by reaching out and helping others, not unlike the military spouses of deployed soldiers. In Susan Marnocha’s study she states, “Since reaching out was a very important theme for women during deployment, all forms of communication became vital to the wife and family” (Marnocha 4.2.7) referencing how these women reach out and find strength and comradery with other spouses going through the same deployment. During a literary event where people were honoring the acts of Jaballa Matar an unknown speaker got up to speak about the kindness and bravery of Fawzia. The man spoke of his imprisonment by the Qaddafi regime “My mother -I am her only child- was losing her mind. She asked who she could stay with in Tripoli and people told her of a woman who put up mothers of political prisoners” (Matar 120). In spite of the loss that she was …show more content…
Penelope was able to ward off the advances of other men, raise her child, and rule Ithaca. When her husband returned home, Penelope found it difficult to hand the reins back to him. After the kidnapping of her husband, Fawzia Tarwah found the strength to move on and help to aid and comfort women who were suffering the same plight. Adversely, by never addressing the possibility that he husband was dead, her son couldn’t accept his father’s fate and continues to chase his ghost.
Works Cited
Homer, “The Odyssey”, Robert Fagles, Penguin Books, 1997, NY
Marnocha, Suzanne. Military Wives Transition and Coping: Deployment and the Return Home”, ISRN Nursing, 798342, NCBI, PMC US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, 2012, DOI: 10.5402/2012/798342, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3403397/
Matar, Hisham. The Return, Random House,
96-101)
Penelope is not only questioning the validity of his identity, but she is hesitant in wielding power back over to him. This is a woman that has been in charge of Ithaca for 20 years. Once she accepts this man as her husband that power will be gone, and she will go back to a life as a subservient wife. In The Return the strength of author Matar Hisham’s mother Fawzia Tarwah differs from Homer’s Penelope in that Odysseus willingly went off to war. Fawzia’s husband was abducted and held captive by the Libyan government. In the wake of the abduction Fawzia found solace and strength by reaching out and helping others, not unlike the military spouses of deployed soldiers. In Susan Marnocha’s study she states, “Since reaching out was a very important theme for women during deployment, all forms of communication became vital to the wife and family” (Marnocha 4.2.7) referencing how these women reach out and find strength and comradery with other spouses going through the same deployment. During a literary event where people were honoring the acts of Jaballa Matar an unknown speaker got up to speak about the kindness and bravery of Fawzia. The man spoke of his imprisonment by the Qaddafi regime “My mother -I am her only child- was losing her mind. She asked who she could stay with in Tripoli and people told her of a woman who put up mothers of political prisoners” (Matar 120). In spite of the loss that she was …show more content…
Penelope was able to ward off the advances of other men, raise her child, and rule Ithaca. When her husband returned home, Penelope found it difficult to hand the reins back to him. After the kidnapping of her husband, Fawzia Tarwah found the strength to move on and help to aid and comfort women who were suffering the same plight. Adversely, by never addressing the possibility that he husband was dead, her son couldn’t accept his father’s fate and continues to chase his ghost.
Works Cited
Homer, “The Odyssey”, Robert Fagles, Penguin Books, 1997, NY
Marnocha, Suzanne. Military Wives Transition and Coping: Deployment and the Return Home”, ISRN Nursing, 798342, NCBI, PMC US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, 2012, DOI: 10.5402/2012/798342, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3403397/
Matar, Hisham. The Return, Random House,