What does penelope say to odysseus

When Odysseus shows up in disguise, she tells her maids to "give him a wash and spread a couch for him here, with bedding and coverlets and with shining blankets" Presumably, she and her maids also spun, wove, and dyed every inch of these shining blankets—by hand. Start to finish, it could easily take a year to produce a good-sized length of cloth, and women would have been involved every step of the way. No wonder Penelope is so obsessed with textiles.

There's something else about her trickery with that loom: you know how Odysseus is constantly described as "crafty"? Check out his "Character Analysis" for all the dirt on tricky Odysseus. Well, he and Penelope must have been the original power couple , because this lady has some tricks of her own. The endless weaving is only the first; at the end of the epic, she devises a plot to get rid of the suitors: making them string Odysseus' bow and shoot and arrow through 12 axe heads, when everyone knows that Odysseus is the only guy who can do that.

And when he finally reveals himself to her, she's got one more trick up her sleeve: testing him to make sure he knows a secret about their bed. It seem like Odysseus has met his match with this one.

He knows it, too. More than anything else, Penelope seems to represent home. She sure spends a lot of time there, and not even in the public spaces. Eumaios describes her as waiting for Odysseus "with enduring heart" in the palace" She's waiting upstairs, refusing to go alone into the "great hall" with the men: "I think that immodest" But when Odysseus finally comes home, she's not so modest: Odysseus "wept as he held his lovely wife, whose thoughts were virtuous … and she could not let him go from the embrace of her white arms" All we hear later is that they "gladly went together to bed, and their old ritual" She may be a modest lady in the great hall, but she's a very willing wife in the bedroom.

The challenge involves a feat that only Odysseus has performed before: stringing his great bow and shooting an arrow through a straight row of twelve axes.

Odysseus enthusiastically approves of her plan. This section of the epic is primarily concerned with the question of Odysseus' identity.

Scholars disagree vehemently on how much Penelope knows. On the surface, she seems to accept the beggar as another wayfaring stranger, certainly more interesting than most but of no great personal significance to her. Beneath the surface, however, the reader can see several indications that Penelope is at least suspicious about the vagrant's true identity.

When Odysseus and Penelope finally meet, she directs the conversation. For three years, she held the suitors off through her ruse of the shroud, telling the suitors that she must finish a shroud for Laertes, her father-in-law, against that sad but inevitable time of his death.

During the day, she worked at her loom in view of the suitors; at night, she unraveled the day's weaving. She was successful in this deception until her own maidservant revealed the truth, a point that also influences Odysseus' eventual judgment of the servants in Book Having in this way identified herself to the visitor, Penelope probes him for information about his background.

Odysseus answers with a fictitious autobiography that includes a friendship with her husband. Penelope tests him by asking specific questions about the clothing and comrades of Odysseus. He mentions Odysseus' herald, Eurybates. Finally, he predicts that her husband will return as the old moon dies and a new moon rises that very month. Why does Odysseus kill the suitors? Odysseus wants revenge on the suitors. They have wasted a lot of his wealth, by living at his expense during his absence.

More importantly, by taking advantage of his absence, the suitors have insulted Odysseus and damaged his reputation. They assume that he is dead, and they hope to marry Penelope to inherit all that she has. The suitors believe Odysseus to be dead. They wish to inherit his vast fortune and kingdom. She claims that she will marry the man who can complete this test because he will be much like Odysseus.

Then, he will shoot an arrow through twelve ax head handles. Pausanias 8. She would weave during the day and undo her work at night, so she would never finish. For three years, Penelope has put off choosing a husband among the suitors by saying that she must first finish weaving a shroud for Laertes.

Thus she delays for three years until a treacherous maid spills the beans. She calls him a big oaf and says that he ogles women. What scheme does Penelope devise to avoid marrying the suitors. She says that she will marry when she finishes her burial shroud, but every night she saps all progress. He asks for a woman who has suffered as much as me. Who is responsible for holding Dawn at bay while Penelope and Odysseus spend their first night together?

With this gentle suitor, they say, Penelope had a love affair, and for that reason, they add, she was killed by her own husband. Yet others have said that Odysseus, having learned that Penelope had slept with the great scoundrel Antinous 2, sent her back to her father Icarius 1 in Lacedaemon.

Her cunning plans helped to further show the loyalty she had for Odysseus. One of these plans was that she would not marry until she completed the burial shroud she had been weaving for Odysseus. In this way she managed to deceive them for three years. So, to hear some tell it, Penelope was unfaithful. And, because she had sex with all the suitors, she got pregnant and eventually gave birth to Pan.

To delay her remarriage, Penelope tells her suitors that she will not choose a future husband until she has finished weaving a burial shroud for her father-in-law. Odysseus gets angry. He explains that he built their bedroom around an ancient olive tree, and used the top of the tree to make their bedpost. He is angry because he believes Penelope must have replaced this bed with a movable one. His anger, and the fact that he knows the story of the bed, proves his identity.