The Odyssey by Homer

The role that women play in The Odyssey is one of power over men . A reader receives an insight into Greek society during this time , noticing that their society was a matriarchal society , when it was supposed to be a patriarchal society . In Greece during this time of about 700 B .C they believed they lived in a patriarchal society , when in reality it was matriarchal . In Greece , there was a prescribed rule that said men were in charge . In actuality , it was the ascribed rule that prevailed saying that women led Greek

society . Epic evokes images of ostensible female power

The representation and description of a variety of females -- human women , goddesses , and monsters -- are among the most striking features of the The Odyssey . For the most part , women and the goddess Athena are described or represented by the voice of the poem 's (implied ) narrator other goddesses and nonhuman females occur mainly in the stories told in the first person by Odysseus , sometimes in secondary narrative by characters whom Odysseus quotes and whose accounts . Only Calypso figures in both authorial and embedded narrative

There are many female characters in The Odyssey that demonstrate that the ascribed rule existed and that women had power over men . One of these characters is Penelope . Penelope is Odysseus ' wife and Telemachus mother . Penelope certainly exercises power over men during her interactions with the suitors , which clearly illustrates the ascribed rule . For example , Penelope promised the suitors that after she was finished weaving on her loom , she would choose a husband 'So every day she wove on the great loom- but every night by torchlight she unwove it and so for three years she deceived the Akhaians (Homer 22 .112-114 . Penelope having power over the suitors exemplifies that the society was not patriarchal because the men truly were to the ones with the power . The women were those who possessed all of the power therefore proving that the society was in fact matriarchal

We do not learn what Penelope actually looks like , but we hear that Odysseus prefers her to Calypso , even though she is "slighter in form and stature to look at face-to-face " than the goddess (5 .217 that Athena enhanced Penelope 's "beautiful face " with ambrosial beauty of the kind Aphrodite uses , and "made her taller and fuller to see and whiter than sawn ivory (18 .192-96 , so that the Suitors desired her all the more and "prayed to lie beside her (18 .212-13 that she herself did not even want to wash the tears off her face when she was leaving her bedroom for the main hall of the palace , and felt the immortals "destroyed [her] excellence in both form and build " when Odysseus went with the Greeks to Troy (18 .178-81 , 251-53 19 .124-26 . This emphasis on the effects of Penelope 's physical appearance however does not diminish the significance of the fact of her possessing power over men

Penelope operates more fully than any male character...