Penelope’s Secret
The night wears on in Odysseus’ house on Ithaca. Penelope has just told a stranger about her dream of twenty geese: an eagle kills them and then reveals itself as Odysseus, returned to destroy the suitors. She longs for the omen to be fulfilled, yet doubts whether the dream foretells the truth. Shortly afterwards, she tells the stranger that the following day she will hold the contest of the bow to choose a new husband. The reader knows who is listening to her. Penelope, apparently, does not.
The scene raises a subtler question than whether Penelope recognises Odysseus: what if she is beginning to suspect who he is, but cannot yet admit it even to herself? Homer never says that this is so. The possibility emerges from the words spoken, the silences between them, and the circumstances in which the conversation takes place.
This article complements “The Dream of the Twenty Geese”. While the earlier article explores Penelope’s dream and its possible meanings, this one examines the conversation that follows. Both can be read independently.
The Conversation
Sección titulada «The Conversation»Odyssey, Book 19, lines 570–599.
Penelope continued:
“I shall tell you something else, and you must keep it in mind. The ill-omened dawn is drawing near, the dawn that will take me away from Odysseus’ house. For now I shall set a contest: the twelve axes that he used to place in a row in his house, like the supports of a ship under construction, and through which he would shoot an arrow from a distance.
“Now I shall set this test before the suitors. Whoever can most easily string the bow and send an arrow through all twelve axes will be the man I follow, leaving this home of my married life, so beautiful and full of riches, which I believe I shall remember even in my dreams.”
Then resourceful Odysseus replied:
“Honoured wife of Odysseus, son of Laertes, do not delay this contest any longer. Odysseus will be here before those men can string the polished bow and send an arrow through the iron.”
Penelope answered:
“If you were willing to stay here, stranger, sitting beside me and cheering me with your conversation, sleep would never fall upon my eyelids. But mortals cannot remain awake for ever, for the immortals have allotted a time to everything upon the grain-giving earth.
“So I shall go upstairs and lie upon my bed, which has become a bed of sorrow, always wet with my tears since the day Odysseus left for accursed Ilion, whose very name I would rather not utter.
“There I shall lie down. You may rest here in the house, making your bed on the floor or allowing the serving women to prepare one for you.”
A Man Made Unrecognisable by Athena
Sección titulada «A Man Made Unrecognisable by Athena»The stranger is not simply Odysseus aged by twenty years of absence. In Book 13, Athena announces that she will make him unrecognisable to everyone, explicitly mentioning the suitors, Penelope and Telemachus. She then touches him with her wand: she wrinkles his skin, makes his hair fall out, dims the brightness of his eyes and dresses him in the rags of a miserable beggar (13.397–403 and 13.429–438). The transformation allows him to enter his own house without revealing his identity.
The goddess intervenes again in Book 19, when Eurycleia recognises her master by the scar on his leg. The old nurse looks towards Penelope, hoping to reveal her discovery, but Athena diverts Penelope’s attention, preventing her from seeing or understanding what has happened (19.475–479). Penelope, therefore, does not have access to all the clues available to the reader: some are deliberately kept from her.
Yet a disguise can change a face without necessarily erasing a familiar voice, a way of speaking, a gesture or a reaction. This distinction matters. If Penelope does begin to suspect who the stranger is, her suspicion need not arise from his appearance. It might come from something far harder to identify.
What Happens as They Talk
Sección titulada «What Happens as They Talk»In any conversation, the words matter, but so do the circumstances in which they are spoken. Penelope announces that she will leave her home and follow the winner of a contest in which the suitors must string Odysseus’ bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axes. She chooses a test associated with a particular skill of her husband. It almost seems like an invitation for him to return, yet she presents it as the means by which her long wait will end.
The significance of this detail should not be overstated. The test is extraordinarily difficult, but we cannot assume that only Odysseus could pass it: in Book 21, Telemachus comes close to stringing the bow and stops when his father gives him a signal (21.124–129). Moreover, at the beginning of that book, it is Athena who inspires Penelope to bring out the bow and axes for the suitors (21.1–4). Divine intervention is part of the unfolding story.
The stranger’s reply is even more puzzling. Rather than dissuading her from marrying again, he urges her not to delay the contest and declares that Odysseus will return before the suitors can complete the test. The reader understands the irony. Odysseus is already there, speaking of himself as though he were absent. Penelope hears those words without asking him how he can be so certain.
She then tells him that, if he stayed to cheer her with his conversation, sleep would not fall upon her eyelids. Why does she find his company so welcome? Homer does not explain. Her words may simply express the relief of finding an attentive listener, but they also leave room for a deeper significance.
The Announcements Before Their Meeting
Sección titulada «The Announcements Before Their Meeting»By the time of this conversation, Penelope has already heard reports about Odysseus that are difficult to reconcile. When Telemachus returns from his journey, he tells her what Menelaus has learned about his father. Then Theoclymenus solemnly prophesies that Odysseus is already on Ithaca, observing what is happening and preparing disaster for the suitors (17.152–161). Penelope longs for his words to be true. But hope is not certainty.
Later, the eagle in her dream identifies itself as Odysseus and announces the death of the suitors (19.535–550). Penelope acknowledges that this would bring joy to her and her son, yet doubts whether the dream belongs among those that foretell the truth (19.560–569). Desire and doubt appear side by side, expressed in her own words. Almost immediately afterwards, she announces the contest of the bow.
We must distinguish what the reader knows from what Penelope herself can know. The reader already knows the stranger’s identity and has witnessed Athena’s interventions. Penelope knows neither the truth about the stranger nor the divine actions that have helped conceal it from her. This difference in knowledge allows even the simplest gestures to acquire a significance for the reader that Penelope herself may not yet understand.
A Second Dream, After the Conversation
Sección titulada «A Second Dream, After the Conversation»The night does not end with their farewell. Penelope goes upstairs, weeps for Odysseus, and finally Athena sends her to sleep (19.600–604). In the following book, waking in distress, she recalls a dream from that very night: Odysseus was lying beside her, looking just as he did when he left for war. Her heart rejoiced, for she believed that what she saw was not a dream but waking reality (20.87–90).
This second dream does not prove that she has recognised the stranger. Yet its place in the narrative is hard to overlook: after speaking with a man who foretells her husband’s return, Penelope dreams that her husband is already lying beside her.
And Homer adds something even more remarkable. Odysseus, lying in the entrance hall of the house, hears Penelope weeping. For a moment, he imagines that she has already recognised him and is standing beside him, near his head (20.91–94).
The Secret She May Not Be Able to Admit
Sección titulada «The Secret She May Not Be Able to Admit»Does Penelope recognise the stranger as Odysseus in Book 19? Scholars have long disagreed. In 1950, Philip W. Harsh argued that she does: the conversation, the dream and the contest of the bow would all form part of an unspoken understanding between husband and wife, who are secretly working together. Anne Amory proposed a different interpretation in 1963: Penelope might recognise Odysseus at an unconscious level in Book 19, without becoming fully aware of his identity until the test in Book 23. Emma Bridges discusses both interpretations in her study of their reunion, while Sheila Murnaghan has explored how the conversation in Book 19 approaches recognition without bringing it to completion.
The distinction is important. We need not imagine Penelope as someone who knows everything and deliberately conceals it. Nor need we assume that she has fully understood who the beggar is. Perhaps she senses something familiar in his words, his intelligence or his manner of thinking; perhaps she feels the urge to believe, yet resists it because experience has taught her how painful false hope can be.
Even if she suspected something, the danger within the house would give her good reason to remain silent. Odysseus keeps his return secret until he is ready to confront the suitors. But Penelope’s secret might run deeper than caution: it might not be something she knows and hides from others, but a suspicion she cannot yet admit even to herself. This remains a possible interpretation. Homer does not allow us to enter her thoughts so completely.
One Bed, Two Conversations
Sección titulada «One Bed, Two Conversations»As she takes leave of the stranger, Penelope speaks of the bed on which she has spent years weeping for Odysseus. She does not describe how it was made or use it as a sign of recognition, but she mentions it. And she does so to the very man who once shared it with her, without knowing — or perhaps without yet daring to believe — that he is sitting before her. In Book 23, a secret about their marriage bed will finally make recognition possible.
After the slaughter of the suitors, Penelope still hesitates. She proposes that their bed be moved from the bedroom. Odysseus is indignant: he built it with his own hands around the trunk of a living olive tree, rooted in the ground, and knows it cannot be moved intact (23.174–204). Only when she hears him reveal the secret of its construction does Penelope recognise and embrace her husband (23.205–230).
It would be unwise to turn the mention of the bed in Book 19 into a secret test that Penelope was already preparing. Its significance is above all literary: in their first conversation, she speaks of the intimacy she has lost to the very man who once shared it with her. In their last, a secret belonging to that shared past allows them to recognise one another at last.
Penelope’s Homecoming
Sección titulada «Penelope’s Homecoming»When Penelope finally recognises Odysseus, Homer compares her joy to that of shipwrecked sailors who, after Poseidon has wrecked their ship, manage to reach the shore and escape death (Odyssey 23.233–240). What is striking is that the comparison applies not to Odysseus, who has survived so many shipwrecks, but to his wife. Penelope too has endured twenty years of anguish: she has feared for her son’s life, suffered the harassment of the suitors, and even wished for death rather than another marriage (20.61–82). As Emma Bridges observes, the poet thus acknowledges that the woman who remained on Ithaca has undergone an odyssey of her own. For Penelope, embracing her husband again is like reaching dry land at last.
Penelope’s Secret
Sección titulada «Penelope’s Secret»What Penelope believes, what she longs to believe, what she is afraid to believe and what she cannot believe are all entangled. So too are what she says and what she leaves unsaid; what she thinks and what she does not know; what she senses and what she will only discover later.
But Homer does not reveal everything that passes through her mind. The reader knows who the stranger is, hears his words and observes Penelope’s reactions, yet cannot know for certain what she herself is thinking. Her secret may lie precisely in that distance between what she knows, what she desires and what she may be beginning to suspect.
We need not imagine that Penelope knows from the outset that the stranger is Odysseus. For twenty years she has defended her home and tried not to be deceived. Now a man whose appearance she does not recognise speaks of her husband and his return with disconcerting certainty. What she most longs to believe may also be what she finds hardest to accept.
Penelope’s secret, then, might not be something she knows and conceals, but something she is beginning to feel and cannot yet admit even to herself. Homer never tells us that this is so. But he has fashioned a conversation in which the truth is present before her long before she can embrace it.