Penelope

Penelope in the Odyssey

Penelope, daughter of Icarius, has waited twenty years for Odysseus while more than a hundred suitors occupy the palace, eat through its wealth and demand that she choose a new husband. Her weapon is delay: she promises to decide once she finishes a burial shroud for Laertes, then secretly unravels her weaving every night for three years.

Homer makes her Odysseus' equal in cunning. She tests the stranger who claims to bring news of her husband, sets up the contest of the bow, and in the end tests Odysseus himself with the secret of their bed, carved from a living olive tree.

Key moments

1. Book 2

   The suitors reveal her trick: for three years she wove Laertes' shroud by day and undid it by night.

2. Books 19–21

   After a long night conversation with the disguised Odysseus, she announces the contest: whoever strings the bow and shoots through twelve axes will marry her.

3. Book 23

   She asks for their bed to be moved; only the real Odysseus knows it cannot be, because one of its posts is a rooted olive tree.

Relationship to Odysseus

She is the home Odysseus sails toward, the measure of his loyalty, and the reason his return must matter beyond survival.