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Male and Female in the Homeric Poems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Charles Rowan Beye
Charles Rowan Beye*
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Extract

The following is an investigation of the nature of women in the Homeric poems. It is generally accepted that epic figures are typical rather than individual, idiosyncratic personalities. So it is reasonable to assume that the women of the two poems represent the general conception of female behaviour held by Homer's audience. Even if the poems represent a tradition which was a long time in the making, it remains true that what appears within the poems must have made sense somehow to Homer's contemporary audience. And that is the sense we must seek.

There has been very little said about the role of women in the Homeric epics. Discussion is bound to be uneven; women are glimpsed infrequently in the Iliad, whereas they are everywhere in the Odyssey. But this in itself perhaps offers insights into the nature of the difference between the two poems. In addition an analysis of the part women play in these poems helps to explain the continual appeal of the Iliad and the Odyssey. For the poems, like all truly great pieces of literature, say things that we humans need and want to hear. As is true of other facets of the poems the female characters are extraordinarily authentic. They manifest moods and psychological states which are true to women, at least in the Western world. Moreover the poems, especially the Odyssey, show with great profundity some important truths of male-female relationships. Whether these are inherent and never-changing or it is because women's situation has not much changed through the millenia is hard to say.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , January 1974 , pp. 87 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1974

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References

1. Kakridis, J., ‘The role of the woman in the Iliad’, Eranos 54 (1956) 21–27Google Scholar, is the only general essay. Articles about specific female characters exist, the best being L. Allione, ‘Telemacho e Penelope nell’ Odissea’, Università di Torino Pubblicazioni della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, vol. 14, fasc. 3; see also Harder, R., ‘Odysseus und Kalypso’, Kleine Schriften (München 1960) 148–163Google Scholar and Wehrli, F., ‘Penelope und Telemachus’, Mus. Helv. 16 (1959) 228–237Google Scholar.

2. Bespaloff, R., On the Iliad (trans. McCarthy, M.), Bollingen Series ix (Washington 1947Google Scholar), has an excellent chapter (59fF.) on Helen in the Iliad as the adulteress, run away for love. Andromache, of course, is equally prisoner of a role; her attempt (6.433ff) to advise Hektor on strategy (and very intelligently indeed) is met with the reply quoted here below, which is a gentle, connubial version of Odysseus’ stroke on Thersites’ back.

3. Gouldner, A. W., The Hellenic World (New York 1969Google Scholar) 60ff., has what seems the best discussion of the relationship of homosexuality to competition.

4. Gouldner (note 3) 41ff. is a marvelous development of this subject. Does the Iliad with its battles, contests and adversary attitudes fill a real and abiding human need? Or does it more directly speak to the needs of that one culture, and we, as its heirs, are thus acculturated? Havelock’s, E. A.Vanier Memorial Lectures, ‘War as a Way of Life in Classical Culture’ (Ottawa 1970Google Scholar), takes up this question. Bowra, C. M., Heroic Poetry (London 1952) 1–47Google Scholar, presents an argument for the need of epic, and by implication the superiority of the cultures which have heroic epic poems. But let us add Simone Weil’s celebrated essay, The Iliad or the Poem of Force (trans. M. McCarthy), and Giraudoux’ La Guerre de Troie n’ aura pas lieu, both of which challenge the affirmative view of epic’s heroics.

5. An observation made to me by W. M. Calder, III.

6. Elsewhere in the Iliad only Achilles expresses such savage sentiments (to the dying Hektor at 22.346ff.); Achilles’ lust for revenge is extreme, so are his throughts.

7. Robert, F., Homère (Paris 1950) 98ff.Google Scholar; Thomson, J. A. K., Studies in the Odyssey (Oxford 1914) 153Google Scholar.

8. Nilsson, M. P., The Mycenean Origin of Greek Mythology (Berkeley 1932) 248Google Scholar.

9. Beye, C. R., The Iliad, the Odyssey and the Epic Tradition (Garden City 1966) 124ffGoogle Scholar.

10. Robert (note 7) 102.

11. Nilsson (note 8) 244.

12. The following quotation from Robert (note 7) 270 is a rather typical blind categorization: ‘… dans Nausicaa qui songe au mariage et dans Télémacque qui s’ exèrce à 1’ autorité virile [ce sont] deux creations intentionellement parallels.’

13. But then something like Hektor’s off-hand allusion to Troy’s courting manners (22.126ff.) which sounds pastoral, Fragonard-like, should remind us of how little we actually know.

14. Butler, S., The Authoress of the Odyssey (London 1922Google Scholar); cf. Cornford’s, F. M. unsympathetic and slighting review in CR 15 (1901) 221fGoogle Scholar.

15. Quoted by Jebb, R. C., Introduction to Homer (Glasgow 1887) 106Google Scholar.

16. H. M., and Chadwick, N. K., The Growth of Literature vol. II (Cambridge 1936) 306f.Google Scholar; 439f.

17. Chadwick (note 16) 622f.

18. Chadwick, N. K. & Zhirmunsky, V., Oral Epics of Central Asia (Cambridge 1969) 127fGoogle Scholar.

19. H. M., and Chadwick, N. K., The Growth of Literature vol. I (Cambridge 1932) 19–63Google Scholar.

20. Carpenter, R., Folk Tale, Fiction and Saga in the Homeric Epics (Berkeley 1956Google Scholar), seems to be posing the same question.

21. Pope, M. W., ‘Athena’s Development in Homeric Epic’, AJP 81 (1960) 134Google Scholar (espc. footnote 25 on that page).

22. Beye, C. R., ‘Homeric Battle Narratives and Catalogues’, HSCP 68 (1964) 368fGoogle Scholar.

23. Beye (note 9) 173f.

24. Sontag, Susan, ‘Notes on Camp’, in Against Interpretation (Dell pb edn. New York 1969) 277ffGoogle Scholar.

25. Germain, G., Homer (trans. Howard, R., London 1960) 126ffGoogle Scholar.

26. Thomson (note 7) 168. The most extreme and detailed search for the matrilineal or matriarchal context of some ur-Odyssey is certainly Butterworth’s, E. A. S. chapter, ‘Penelope’s Weaving and the Wedding of Nausikaa’, in Some Traces of the Pre-Olympian World in Greek Literature and Myth (Berlin 1966) 98ffGoogle Scholar. The argument is vitiated by depending upon a belief in vivid editorial incongruities in the Odyssey as well as the notion that Homer’s audience would tolerate allusions to matters that were remarkably at variance with what we might call the patent story line.

27. Germain (note 25) 135.

28. Wiliamowitz-Moellendorf, U. v., Homerische Untersuchungen (Berlin 1884) 115Google Scholar; cf. also Woodhouse, W. J., The Composition of Homer’s Odyssey (Oxford 1930) 46ffGoogle Scholar.

29. Pocock, L. G., Reality and Allegory in the Odyssey (Amsterdam 1959) 114fGoogle Scholar.

30. Thomson (note 7) 54ff.

31. Woodhouse (note 28) 46 talks of the Nymph and Shipwreck motif; cf. also R. Harder (note 1) 151ff. for a very good discussion of Calypso as a nymph, and of the maiden/nymph-hero genre of adventure, e.g., Ariadne and Theseus, Jason and Hypsipyle, etc.

32. M. Finley, I., The World of Odysseus (New York City 1965, Viking Press edn.) 91fGoogle Scholar; 136–141 is typical. He appreciates the superior nature of Helen and Arete and is perplexed by Penelope’s power because of her obvious dependency.

33. Nilsson, M. P., Homer and Mycenae (London 1933) 225fGoogle Scholar.

34. See Woodhouse’s (note 28) often outrageously funny chapter, ‘The Loyal Wife’ 199ff.

35. Kirk, G. S., The Songs of Homer (Cambridge 1962) 366Google Scholar. The quotation itself seems a paradigm of male condescension if not misogyny.

36. Carpenter (note 20) 165ff.

37. Harder (note 1) develops an interesting theory that Odysseus is in a sense rehabilitated from fairy land to real land through his stay first with Calypso and then with Nausicaa, for which see especially pp. 153f.

38. See Segal, C., ‘Circean Temptations: Homer, Vergil, Ovid’, TAPA 99 (1968) 419ffGoogle Scholar. Paramount Pictures a decade ago released a film version of the story entitled Ulysses with Kirk Douglas in the title role and with Silvana Mangano playing the roles of both Circe and Penelope, certainly a subtle and clever stroke. See also Butterworth (note 26) 97.

39. Allione (note 1) 63ff. defends this passage at length (against well-known objections listed by her in her footnote 4, p. 66). Her arguments, however, do not get at the real answer, which has to do with the logic of folk narrative. Arguments from realism won’t do, which is why Page is so wrong (Homeric Odyssey [Oxford 1955] 123fGoogle Scholar.). I believe that audience and poet were able to place the template, so to speak, of Circe upon Penelope. Thus her tricking and cozening the suitors is natural. Odysseus’ smile is also natural because he knows and understands women/ his wife and he will master the situation/her with the bow (moly). So, too, Penelope’s seemingly startling planning of a contest and setting herself as prize is true to Circe and of course to the structural demands for a dénouement. For the poet and his audience it does not at all threaten Odysseus’ position. Only for the realist and literal-minded. Then, of course, we must remember Harsh’s, P. W. extraordinary interpretation, ‘Penelope and Odysseus in Odyssey XIX’, AJP 71 (1950Google Scholar), to which I was once much attracted, but which seems to me now an unnecessary explanation, also too subtle. The logic of folk narrative is a better vantage of criticism.

40. Wehrli (note 1) 231 points out that the shroud story in the twenty-fourth book of the Odyssey does not contain the fact of the suitors staying in the house. It is that latter which, of course, makes Penelope more Circe-like; at the same time without that element the shroud becomes more a magical force of doom.

41. J. Kakridis (note 1) 27.

42. Harder (note 1) 161 seems to be saying something the same about Odysseus refusing Calypso: ‘und gross tritt nun der Kern seines Wesens hervor; massvoll und fest, der reine männliche Wille.’