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Why is Penelope so important in the Odyssey?
Odysseus’s wife, Penelope plays a crucial role in Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’, with not only providing the motivation for Odysseus’s return to Ithaca, but she is also the center of the plot involving the suitors and the fate of Telemakos and Ithaca itself.
What does Penelope represent in the Odyssey?
Penelope expresses her courage, compassion, and helpfulness throughout The Odyssey. She has faith and depends on the goddess Athena to grant her wishes. Penelope is the daughter of Icarius and lives in Ithaca. She is representing women who are faithful to their husband no matter the situation.
Why Penelope is such a good partner for Odysseus?
Their loyalty allows Penelope to wait for Odysseus, and his loyalty keeps him focussed on returning home. Their cunning is used to take advantage of the suitors and protect themselves from lasting harm. Penelope’s loyalty and cunning make her the ideal woman for Odysseus.
Why is Penelope admirable?
Although a wife in a male-dominated society, Penelope takes on the role of a female heroine and capably deals with those all-consuming suitors. A patient woman and a devoted wife, she displays exceptional intelligence and is able to control a situation without appearing to do so.
How was Penelope clever in the Odyssey?
The emblem of Penelope’s cleverness is the device by which she tricks her suitors for three years, her weaving. She uses the weaving to buy herself time, but the weaving is itself an image of time. Time is a weaving and unweaving; it makes and unmakes beings and relations.
What does Penelope value most in the Odyssey?
Odysseus’s wife and Telemachus’s mother. In the beginning of the story, Penelope’s most prominent qualities are passivity, loyalty, and patience (along with beauty and skill at the loom) – the age-old feminine virtues. She does very little but lie in bed and weep.
What type of person is Penelope?
Character Analysis Penelope Some critics dismiss Penelope as a paragon of marital fidelity — a serious and industrious character, a devoted wife and mother, but one who lacks the fascination and zest for life that some of Homer’s immortal women display. However, Penelope is not a pasteboard figure.
How is Penelope clever?
The emblem of Penelope’s cleverness is the device by which she tricks her suitors for three years, her weaving. She uses the weaving to buy herself time, but the weaving is itself an image of time. In her deception, Penelope gives the impression time has no consequence.
Why is Penelope so smart?
It is in Penelope that Homer more purely explores the possibilities and limitations of Odyssean cleverness. The emblem of Penelope’s cleverness is the device by which she tricks her suitors for three years, her weaving. She uses the weaving to buy herself time, but the weaving is itself an image of time.
What are the characteristics of Penelope in the Odyssey?
Penelope Character Analysis. Odysseus ‘s wife and Telemachus ‘s mother. In the beginning of the story, Penelope’s most prominent qualities are passivity, loyalty, and patience (along with beauty and skill at the loom) – the age-old feminine virtues. She does very little but lie in bed and weep.
What did Penelope say to the maid in the Odyssey?
In Book 23 of “The Odyssey,” Penelope spoke to the maid Euryclea: “I have never slept so soundly from the day my poor husband went to that city with the ill–omened name” (Homer). Odysseus was absent from Penelope’s life for twenty years. Despite his long absence, Penelope stayed faithful to him.
What was Penelope’s original name before she married Odysseus?
Penelope is known for her fidelity to her husband Odysseus, despite the attention of several suitors during his absence. In one source, Penelope’s original name was Arnacia or Arnaea.
Robert S. P. Beekes believed the name to be Pre-Greek and related to pēnelops ( πηνέλοψ) or pēnelōps ( πηνέλωψ ). Penelope is married to the main character, the king of Ithaca, Odysseus (Ulysses in Roman mythology), and daughter of Icarius of Sparta and Periboea (or Polycaste ).