Women in the Odyssey

Odysseus longs to return home, but his homecoming depends time and again on the women he encounters. Athena sets his return in motion; Circe and then Calypso hold him back; Nausicaa helps him when he reaches land after a shipwreck, and her mother, Arete, recognises the clothes he is wearing and questions him about them. In Ithaca, Eurycleia discovers who is hiding beneath the beggar’s rags, while Penelope puts her husband to the test before recognising him. Even the serving women in Odysseus’ household have a part to play, and their loyalties and betrayals will have consequences. What each woman knows, wants or decides helps shape the traveller’s fate.

The prominence of women in the poem caught the attention of Samuel Butler, who argued in 1897 that the Odyssey had been composed by a woman. His hypothesis invites us to return to the poem with a question in mind: what place do women occupy in the story of Odysseus’ homecoming?

Samuel Butler’s hypothesis

In The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897), Samuel Butler argued that the poem had been composed by a young woman, probably from Trapani in Sicily, who, he believed, had portrayed herself as Nausicaa. His principal arguments were as follows:

The importance and portrayal of female characters
- Women are portrayed with greater psychological depth than many of the male characters.
- Athena, Penelope, Helen, Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa, and Arete display intelligence, initiative, and authority.
- Men frequently depend on women's intervention and advice.
Arete's authority among the Phaeacians
- Nausicaa advises Odysseus to appeal to her mother, Arete, rather than to her father, Alcinous.
- Arete recognises the stranger's clothes and asks how he came by them.
- Butler interprets the queen's influence as another sign of a female perspective.
Detailed knowledge of domestic life
- The poem pays particular attention to weaving, clothing, rooms, servants, and household tasks.
- It describes family relationships and the organisation of the household in detail.
- Butler attributes this knowledge to a woman's everyday experience.
Supposed unfamiliarity with traditionally male pursuits
- Butler finds certain episodes involving seamanship, athletic contests, and fighting unconvincing.
- He points to supposed inconsistencies in the Phaeacian games, the contest of the bow, and the slaughter of the suitors.
- He interprets these difficulties as signs of a female author unfamiliar with certain activities traditionally associated with men.
Concern for women's conduct and reputation
- He emphasises the importance of Penelope's fidelity and the concern shown for women's reputation.
- He pays particular attention to the severity of the punishment imposed on the serving women who had relations with the suitors.
- He notes that, during Odysseus' visit to the underworld, the heroines appear before the great male heroes.
- Butler believes he can discern distinctly female interests and sensibilities in these details.
Nausicaa as a possible self-portrait
- Butler imagines a young, unmarried, intelligent author from a prosperous family.
- He considers Nausicaa to possess these qualities and suggests that she may represent the writer herself.
- He interprets descriptions of the Phaeacian palace and its surroundings as memories of places the author knew personally.
- He places this hypothetical author in Trapani, Sicily, whose geography he believes he can recognise in both Scheria and the Ithaca of the poem.

Butler produced a fine prose translation of the Odyssey and knew the poem intimately. Many of his observations are perceptive, especially those concerning the prominence of women, but his arguments are not sufficient to establish that the work was composed by a woman.

We cannot even be certain how much of the poem can be attributed to Homer himself. The Odyssey emerged from a long oral tradition in which women, too, may have participated. We do not know precisely how the work that has come down to us took shape, or what transformations it underwent before being committed to writing. Trying to determine the sex and identity of its composer from its characters and episodes seems to go too far.

Yet Butler’s hypothesis has one virtue: it draws our attention to something unmistakably present in the poem. Women are not merely wives, mothers, lovers, or servants. Some exercise power; others advise, protect, deceive, recognise, or test. Their decisions repeatedly affect Odysseus’ fate.

The household, weaving, marriage, and hospitality are recurring features of the Odyssey. They are not merely elements of the background, but settings in which women exercise influence, confront limitations, and sometimes determine the course of events.

Head of an unidentified woman. Detail from the lid of a lebes gamikos, a vessel associated with ancient Greek wedding ceremonies. Apulian red-figure pottery, attributed to the Painter of Athens 1714, c. 360–350 BC. The woman wears a diadem, earrings and a necklace. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. Cp 774 (K 196.2). Louvre Collections.

How many women appear?

A comparison of the characters in the Iliad and the Odyssey provides a useful starting point. In the inventory compiled for this project, each individually identifiable character is counted once per poem, whether named or distinguished by family relationship, role or action. Figures who are merely mentioned are included, while groups whose members cannot be individually distinguished are excluded. Using these criteria, the results are as follows.

Individually identifiable female characters	Iliad	Odyssey
Total	97	83
Share of all characters	15.6%	27.9%
Divine or supernatural	58	24
Free mortal women	29	42
Dependants, captives or enslaved women	10	17

The percentages are calculated from 622 individually identifiable characters in the Iliad and 297 in the Odyssey. The count includes women who are only mentioned and do not take part in the action.

The result may be surprising: the Iliad contains more individually identifiable women in absolute terms. In the Odyssey, however, women account for nearly three in every ten characters, compared with roughly one in six in the Iliad. The distribution also differs: 58 of the Iliad’s 97 female figures are divine or supernatural, compared with 24 of the Odyssey’s 83. Free mortal women and those classified as dependants, captives or enslaved number 39 in the Iliad and 59 in the Odyssey.

Part of the contrast can be explained by the different subjects of the two poems. The Iliad tells of a war and focuses on warriors, their battles and their lineages. The Odyssey, by contrast, tells the story of a homecoming and gives more space to encounters, family relationships and domestic life.

Holding the traveller back and showing him the way

Athena intervenes from the beginning. She works to bring Odysseus home and visits Telemachus to encourage him to act. Later she protects the hero, alters his appearance, and helps him prepare to reclaim his home and position in Ithaca. Her intelligence complements Odysseus’ own: returning home requires concealment, calculation and knowing when to act, as well as surviving the dangers of the voyage (Odyssey 1, 13 and 22).

At the opening of the story, Odysseus is on Calypso’s island, longing for his homeland and his wife. The goddess wishes to keep him with her, but the prospect of an immortal life cannot replace what he has lost. When Hermes brings her Zeus’s order to let him leave, Calypso protests against the gods, who take offence when a goddess makes a mortal man her lover. Her desire conflicts with the hero’s return; nevertheless, after voicing her grievance, she provides him with the means to build a raft and sail away (Odyssey 5).

Circe had presented another obstacle during the wanderings that Odysseus later recounts to the Phaeacians. She turns his companions into pigs and tries to subject Odysseus himself to the same spell, but he resists her power with the help of Hermes. The situation then changes completely. The men regain their human form and stay in Circe’s house for a year, while Odysseus shares her bed. When his companions remind him that they must return home, Odysseus asks Circe to let them go. She tells them how to reach the dead and consult Tiresias and, after their return, warns them of the dangers ahead. Circe, who initially threatened to halt their journey, eventually welcomes them and gives them the knowledge they need to continue it (Odyssey 10–12).

Nausicaa’s welcome offers a different possibility. When Odysseus reaches the land of the Phaeacians, he is naked, exhausted and bears no outward sign of being a king. The young woman listens to him, sees that he receives clothing and food, and tells him how to reach the palace. After he has washed and Athena has enhanced his appearance, Nausicaa even wishes for a husband like him. Yet she avoids entering the city beside him: she fears the gossip of those who might take him for her future husband. Her initiative is shaped by the obligations of hospitality, her own desires and the expectations placed on a young woman of royal birth (Odyssey 6).

Nausicaa advises him to seek out her mother, Arete, first, for the queen wields extraordinary influence within the royal household. Athena confirms the respect Arete commands among the Phaeacians. In the palace, Arete recognises the stranger’s cloak and tunic: she and her serving women had made them. She asks who he is, where he comes from and who gave him those clothes. The garments Nausicaa provided by the river thus connect the unknown visitor with the royal family. Alcinous retains his authority as king, but it is Arete who takes the initiative in questioning the guest and prompts him to explain how he reached the Phaeacians, although Odysseus still does not reveal his name (Odyssey 7.233–297).

The homecoming

In Ithaca, Penelope has used her loom to gain time. The suitors consume the household’s wealth and demand that she marry again; she promises to choose a husband when she has finished Laertes’ burial shroud. By day she weaves, and by night she unravels her work, until her own serving women reveal the deception to the suitors. The loom allows her to postpone the decision for three years, until her stratagem is exposed in the fourth, although it does not remove the pressure upon her (Odyssey 2 and 19).

The conversation with the beggar, in Book 19, brings that uncertainty together with the possibility of Odysseus’ return. Penelope asks questions, listens to her visitor’s story, tells him her dream of the twenty geese and announces the contest of the bow. The stranger interprets the dream as foretelling the suitors’ deaths, but Penelope doubts that Odysseus will return. The reader knows who stands before her; Penelope, however, does not realise that she is speaking to her own husband. The difference between what the reader knows and what Penelope knows sustains the tension of their encounter.

Even after the suitors have been killed, Penelope does not immediately accept the man who presents himself as her husband. The decisive test concerns the bed Odysseus built using the trunk of an olive tree still rooted in the ground. By ordering that the bed be moved out of the bedroom, she provokes Odysseus’ protest: he knows how it was built and that it cannot be moved without destroying it. This knowledge, shared by husband and wife, makes recognition possible. For much of his homecoming Odysseus has concealed his identity as part of his strategy; now Penelope is the one who puts him to the test (Odyssey 23).

Clothing, the loom and the bed thus become part of the action. Arete gains information from garments; Penelope uses weaving to delay her marriage and the secret of the bed to recognise her husband. Domestic knowledge becomes a means of asking questions, resisting pressure and establishing the truth.

The women who serve in the household

Eurycleia recognises Odysseus in a different way. As she washes the beggar’s feet, she discovers his scar: physical contact reveals what his disguise has hidden. Her knowledge comes from years of caring for the family. Yet Odysseus seizes her by the throat and demands silence, even threatening to kill her if she reveals his identity. The old woman recognises her master, but the threat makes clear that she is not free to act on what she knows (Odyssey 19).

The situation of the serving women is also part of the story of the homecoming. Some are given names and individual histories. Melantho, for example, had been brought up by Penelope like a daughter, but she has relations with the suitor Eurymachus and treats the stranger disguised as a beggar with contempt. Other serving women appear only as a group. Eurycleia mentions fifty enslaved women in the household, twelve of whom she identifies as disloyal. After the suitors’ deaths, these women are forced to remove the bodies and clean the hall. Odysseus orders their execution, and Telemachus chooses to hang them. The narrative presents their deaths as punishment for their conduct with the suitors and their disloyalty to the household, although their enslaved status requires us to consider the unequal power relations within which they lived (Odyssey 18 and 22).

These differences matter. Penelope, a queen; Eurycleia, an enslaved woman; Nausicaa, a young woman of royal birth; and Calypso, a goddess, do not have the same resources or face the same restrictions. The women of the poem occupy very different positions and lead very different lives.

None of this tells us whether the Odyssey was composed by a man or a woman. But Butler drew attention to a fundamental feature of the poem: women continually shape Odysseus’ fate, sometimes helping him and sometimes preventing his return. They do so from very different positions, and their freedom to act depends both on who they are and on the place they occupy in the world Homer describes.