2.84–128

This is the first of three descriptions of Penelope’s deception in the poem, the other two being by Penelope (19.138–63) and the ghost of Amphimedon (24.129–47), and much scholarly ink has been spilled over what the small differences between them might mean. None of these discrepancies alters the plot of the poem or our perception of Penelope. The basic form of the story appears in various folktales about an insistent lover put off by a trick. Penelope’s holding action makes tactical sense given her situation, but also represents a desire to stop—or step out of—time, an impulse reflected elsewhere in her behavior before she recognizes the beggar as Odysseus. She exists in a state of frozen grief, unwilling to listen to songs about her husband, seeking escape from her troubles in sleep or even death (18.201–5; 20.62–86; 23.15–19). Not until she questions the beggar in Book 19 and he says that he met Odysseus in Crete just before he set off for Troy does the ice begin to thaw:

ἴσκε ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγων ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα:
τῆς δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἀκουούσης ῥέε δάκρυα, τήκετο δὲ χρώς:
ὡς δὲ χιὼν κατατήκετ᾽ ἐν ἀκροπόλοισιν ὄρεσσιν,
ἥν τ᾽ Εὖρος κατέτηξεν, ἐπὴν Ζέφυρος καταχεύῃ:
τηκομένης δ᾽ ἄρα τῆς ποταμοὶ πλήθουσι ῥέοντες:
ὣς τῆς τήκετο καλὰ παρήϊα δάκρυ χεούσης,
κλαιούσης ἑὸν ἄνδρα παρήμενον. αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς

He spoke, telling many lies that were like truth. 
And as she listened, tears began to flow, softening her complexion. 
As when snow melts on the peaks of the mountains, 
snow that the West wind piles up and the East wind thaws, 
and the rivers overflow with its melting. 
So her lovely cheeks were softened with the running tears, 
As she wept for her husband, who was sitting beside her.

Odyssey 19.203–9

The slow and tantalizing process by which Penelope reconnects with her husband, one of the glories of the poem, begins here. Underneath the beggar’s wrinkles, Odysseus reaches out to her, telling a false tale that seems “like truth.” With this simile, the poet suggests that he is getting through to her while maintaining his anonymity. That the growing closeness motivates her decision to tell him of her dream and eventually to hold the contest of the bow to choose a new husband, who will turn out to be Odysseus. The story of her web trick, retold three times through the poem, becomes the focus for our understanding of her subtle, inward nature, as she moves from passive to active, from powerless to powerful, from death to life.

Penelope’s holding action is only one part of the Odyssey’s complex representation of time, both human and divine. The nostos plot requires a fairytale kingdom, in which Odysseus’s triumphant return and restoration of right order in the poem can occur without any accommodation to the exigencies of time. In this view, twenty years have passed without any impact on his relationship to his wife, son, and father. It will all come seamlessly into synch once the suitors are gone. The perspective here reflects the timeless world of the gods, where no one grows old. Athena is the agent of this view in the poem, orchestrating people and events to achieve a predetermined outcome, as Zeus recognizes (see essays on Book 1, p.8):

‘τέκνον ἐμόν, ποῖόν σε ἔπος φύγεν ἕρκος ὀδόντων.
οὐ γὰρ δὴ τοῦτον μὲν ἐβούλευσας νόον αὐτή,
ὡς ἦ τοι κείνους Ὀδυσεὺς ἀποτίσεται ἐλθών;
Τηλέμαχον δὲ σὺ πέμψον ἐπισταμένως, δύνασαι γάρ,
ὥς κε μάλ᾽ ἀσκηθὴς ἣν πατρίδα γαῖαν ἵκηται,
μνηστῆρες δ᾽ ἐν νηὶ: παλιμπετὲς ἀπονέωνται.

My child, what word has escaped the barrier of your teeth?
Haven’t you yourself arranged this plan,
that Odysseus would return to punish these men?
Contrive to send Telemachus back—you can do it—
so he arrives safely in his own fatherland,
and the suitors struggle back to port.

Odyssey 5.22–27

Penelope’s resistance to the passage of time fits this perspective. Weaving and unweaving, she symbolically holds up the death of Laertes by never finishing the shroud. After four years, the suitors force her hand and begin the inexorable forward movement toward the poem’s dramatic climax in Book 22. Odysseus’s nostos, on the other hand, reflects an interplay of both circular and linear time in the poem. His journey from Troy is recursive, taking him back toward the home and family he left twenty years before. Within that journey, his linear progress toward Ithaka is articulated through a series of smaller circular movements. He arrives in various places as an anonymous stranger and holds onto that persona until it is safe for his identity to be revealed, by him or others, always a dramatic high point in the poem. This pattern of what we might call “existential time,” where Odysseus begins as “nobody” and works his way back to his heroic persona, rehearses the final, glorious moment when Penelope recognizes her husband after the slaughter of the suitors, and he is finally restored to his role as head of the household.

Telemachus’s story like his father’s, reflects the interplay of both circular and linear time in the poem. He too will have a miniature nostos when he returns from Sparta to stand beside his father against the suitors. But his evolution from boy to man is decidedly linear, as he moves toward his destined role in the household. The clash between his movement toward maturity and the return of his father as king, husband, father, and son, comes to a dramatic climax in the stringing of the bow, when he finally steps back to allow Odysseus to return to his position of primacy (21.150–224; see also essay on 1.1–43).

Further Reading

Amory, A. 1963. “The Reunion of Odysseus and Penelope.” In Essays on the Odyssey, ed. C. Taylor, 101. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.

Murnaghan, S. 1987. Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey, 129–131. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer’s Odyssey, 107–110. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.