It is more plausible to view The Odyssey as the product of archaic male imaginations, questioning and defending the inequalities of male dominance within the status quo. The poem meditates on what women might be capable of, and the degree to which their potential can or should be suppressed. We are shown differences in how men and women behave—for instance, women in Homer do not fight, attack, or kill one another, or travel to foreign countries for trade or war. There are also similarities: both men and women speak, sing, cry, steal, think, plan, deceive, celebrate, organize, give orders, and feel a whole range of emotions—grief, surprise, frustration, rage, embarrassment, shame, loneliness, and joy.
The Odyssey is a poem in which certain females have far more power than real women ever did in the society of archaic Greece. Most obviously, the goddess Athena, born from the head of her father, guides Odysseus through all his wanderings and all his plots, schemes, disguises, and battles back in Ithaca. Only through female divine power can his patriarchal dominance over his household be regained. On a human level, it is essential for the plot that Penelope has the power to choose in her husband’s absence to marry one of her suitors, and that if she does so, the suitors will either divide the wealth of the house, or the new bridegroom will take control of the whole palace. It never seems to have been a normal Greek custom for power over the household to transfer through the woman to a new husband. But the notion is vitally important in The Odyssey: if Penelope remarries, Odysseus will lose not only a person he loves, but also, perhaps more important, all his economic wealth and social status. It is at least hinted as a possibility that the wife in this poem, unlike most wives in real archaic society, has the power to choose the man who will have control over her household.
In many respects, the text reflects social roles that presumably existed in real life. Girls and women in The Odyssey occupy different social spheres from those of men and boys, and their particular types of expertise are different. Female slaves (like Eurycleia) take care of children inside the house and perform domestic labor, like making the beds and lighting the torches, while some male slaves (like the old swineherd Eumaeus) take care of animals and others (like Dolius and his sons) do farmwork and gardening. The task of feeding and clothing the elite is also divided along gender lines. Women slaves grind the grain, bake the bread, and set and clear the tables, while male slaves prepare and serve the meat and pour the wine. Women slaves (like Eurycleia and Eurynome) are the ones who wash, scrub, and anoint the bodies of male guests, and female slaves help elite women make the household clothes and linens, by spinning and weaving cloth, and help them take care of the clothes by doing laundry. Girls make the daily trip to fetch water for the household. Carpenters, shipbuilders, construction workers, ironmongers, priests, fishermen, hunters, pirates, tradesmen, and poets are male.
Among the elite, too, there are clear distinctions between male and female kinds of activity. Powerful men participate in male-only council meetings, and they are the ones who lead troops to war or (what is presented as much the same thing) on raids to kill and rob from neighboring settlements. Elite men are the primary participants in athletic competitions, although we glimpse girls playing ball in their spare time. Men predominate at feasts and banquets, although exceptional noblewomen (such as Helen, and Arete, queen of Phaeacia) are present. Elite women have a separate suite in the house, a set of “upper” or “inmost” rooms, such that Penelope is able to withdraw from the rowdy bustle of the suitors to her own tearstained bed.
The poem circles around the question of whether an elite woman’s worth depends entirely on sexual fidelity. Odysseus has affairs with Calypso and Circe in the course of his wanderings, as well as a carefully calibrated flirtation with young Nausicaa. These episodes are not presented as a sign of disloyalty to his wife or a blot on his character—although it is notable that he is rather selective in his final account of these adventures when he tells Penelope about his journey. By contrast, the poem presents it as a matter of the utmost importance that Penelope must keep her suitors at bay and wait indefinitely for her absent husband. Female fidelity is important for maintaining a husband’s sense of honor and control; it is associated with the preservation of a particular wealthy household and the perpetuation of a particular elite family line. The double standard creates a particular kind of vulnerability for both men and women within the system.
But the story of the affair between the god Ares and the goddess Aphrodite, told by the poet Demodocus in Book 8, reminds us that female fidelity may be important only in specific human social environments. Hephaestus, Aphrodite’s husband, is furious about the affair, traps the lovers in bed, and wants to punish Ares; but the other male gods (with the important exception of Poseidon) treat the whole thing as an amusing joke. The divine lovers, male and female, skip away unharmed, with apparently no damage done to their reputation or status. Odysseus, whose greatest fear is that Penelope will act like Aphrodite, reacts oddly to this narrative: he is delighted. Perhaps there is a kind of relief in imagining a situation so different from his own—a world in which an adulterous affair does not result in loss of status, loss of wealth, and loss of life.
The most insistent declarations that women’s value depends entirely on their loyalty to their husbands comes in the mouth of the murdered Agamemnon, who has good reason to be upset about adulterous wives; his wife’s sexual infidelity represents the takeover of his household by Aegisthus. Odysseus meets the ghost of Agamemnon in Book 11 and is given a stern warning to keep a close watch on Penelope—lest she act as Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra, did, murdering him when he comes home and allowing the suitors to take control of Ithaca. Later, in Book 24, the spirit of Agamemnon meets the spirits of the murdered suitors, learns their story, and responds by exclaiming how lucky Odysseus was to have such a faithful, intelligent wife, whose fame should be made the subject of a divine poem—perhaps a poem like The Odyssey itself, but one that would allow a more prominent role for “intelligent Penelope.”
The story of Aegisthus, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, and Orestes recurs repeatedly in The Odyssey as the shadowy parallel to the story of the suitors, Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus. This parallel homecoming serves as a dark warning of what could have happened to Odysseus if he had arrived home openly, as Agamemnon did, rather than in disguise. The story of Agamemnon’s death invites us to read Odysseus’ slaughter of the suitors in terms of preemptive self-defense, as if he had to kill them in order to avoid being killed in turn. It is also presented as an important lesson for Telemachus. Without a son mature and determined enough to kill Aegisthus, Agamemnon’s murder would have been left unavenged. Telemachus’ growth to maturity seems in some ways to threaten Odysseus’ position in the household: there would be less need for the father to return and regain control, if the son were already adult enough to manage everything and keep his mother’s suitors at bay. Conversely, the example of Orestes presents a case where the son’s maturity unambiguously benefits his father, albeit only after the father’s death.
In some versions of the Agamemnon story, Clytemnestra actually kills her husband, with Aegisthus merely the accessory to the crime. This is the version used by Aeschylus in his later tragedy, the Agamemnon; but it was likely that this version of the myth was already known at the time of the composition of The Odyssey. Why, then, is Clytemnestra’s role consistently minimized in the references to the story here? A possible reason is that presenting Clytemnestra as eager to sleep with her suitor and murder her husband would cast a disturbing light on Odysseus’ own wife, Penelope. The Agamemnon story is thus not simply contrasted with the Odysseus story, but also made parallel to it: in both cases, the wife is a decent person whose loyalty is tested when her husband is away at war. But the shadowy presence of the Agamemnon story may also underline our awareness that Penelope may not be able to wait forever for her absent husband. Moreover, in other early versions of the myth (as in Aeschylus), Orestes kills not only Aegisthus but also his own mother, Clytemnestra. In The Odyssey, we are told only that Orestes killed Aegisthus; the matricide is carefully erased from the story. But the uneasy relationship between Penelope and Telemachus clearly shows us that the interests of mothers and sons need not coincide. This parallel story acts as a reminder of the importance of Penelope’s loyalty, and also reminds us that a sensible wife whose husband is long gone might have to move on.