Penelope

Penelope is the queen of Ithaca, wife of Odysseus and mother of Telemachus. During Odysseus’s twenty-year absence at Troy and on his journey home, she preserves his household against more than a hundred suitors seeking to marry her and claim his kingdom. She delays choosing a new husband by promising to decide after completing a burial shroud for Laertes, which she weaves by day and secretly unravels at night.

In the Odyssey, Penelope preserves Odysseus’s household during his twenty-year absence while resisting pressure from numerous suitors. Her device of weaving and secretly unweaving Laertes’ shroud, and her final testing of Odysseus’s knowledge of their marriage bed, establish her as a figure of intelligence as well as fidelity.

Homer’s The Odyssey makes Penelope the guardian of Odysseus’s household during his twenty-year absence, resisting the suitors through delay, intelligence and careful control of what she reveals. Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Wanderings of Odysseus preserves that role in a modern retelling, balancing the hero’s adventures with Penelope and Telemachus’s struggle to prevent the household from being consumed. Madeline Miller’s Circe brings Penelope to Aiaia after Odysseus’s death and gives her a new relationship with the witch who once detained her husband. H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang’s The World’s Desire begins from the darker premise that Odysseus returns to find Penelope dead, turning her absence into the motive for his final wandering. Mary Beard’s Women & Power uses Telemachus’s command that Penelope withdraw from public speech as a foundational example of the Western tradition of silencing authoritative female voices.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Penelope (1 series)

Penguin Classics: Ancient World in Order

by various authors 32 books 4.6(13,212)

Penguin Classics: Ancient World brings together foundational works of literature, history, philosophy, drama and poetry from the earliest civilisations through classical Greece and Rome. The wider Penguin Classics series began in 1946 with E. V. Rieu’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey, reflecting its original aim of making important texts…