Summary
"The Suitors Stuff Their Faces"
In "The Suitors Stuff their Faces," Penelope sees one of the suitors, Antinous, in the underworld, long after they both have died. Antinous was the first of the suitors that Odysseus killed when he finally returned to Ithaca. Penelope asks Antinous why the suitors behaved so badly when the consequences of that behavior (that Odysseus would murder them) was foretold. Antinous tells Penelope that they wanted the "treasure trove," or the riches of Odysseus's kingdom (102). The suitors also found it more convenient that Penelope was older than them, because it meant that they could marry a young princess after she had passed away.
In Ithaca, Odysseus has been gone for so long he is assumed to be dead. Suitors begin to arrive, "show[ing] up every day at the palace" and forcing Penelope to act the part of the gracious host (103). The suitors eat vast amounts of food and harass the maids as they try to convince Penelope to marry one of them. The maids tell Penelope the vile and violent things they say about her behind her back. Penelope is stuck playing the gracious host with the suitors, as she has little way out of this mess. She reminds herself of the advice her mother gave her on her wedding day: "Behave like water. Don't try to oppose them. When they try to grasp you, slip through their fingers. Flow around them" (108). Penelope pretends to react favorably to the suitors' advances in an attempt to hedge them off but tells them that she will not choose any of them until she is 100% certain that Odysseus will never return.
"The Shroud"
As time passes, the suitors put more pressure on Penelope to make a choice. Telemachus, too, is frustrated by this situation. He does not want his mother to return to Sparta, as she would take half of the riches in the castle with her since they had been her dowry. He also does not want her to cave in and marry a suitor, however, because that would give him a stepfather with authority over him. He cannot kill his mother, either, as the three Fates would chase after him and drive him insane. Telemachus takes his frustration out on his mother with "surly monosyllables and resentful glances" (111).
Penelope comes up with a scheme: tell the suitors that she is making a shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes, and she will not marry any of them until the shroud is completed. Then, every night, undo the previous day's work, so that the shroud never gets any bigger. Penelope chooses twelve maids to help her with this task (we already know these maids, as they are the same ones from the chorus). They have lived with Penelope their whole lives and are therefore Penelope's "most trusted eyes and ears in the palace" (114). Penelope and the maids pick away at the weaving for more than three years.
As they spy on the suitors, several of the maids are raped and seduced. Penelope takes care of the maids after the suitors hurt them. She tells them, however, to keep up the act and make the suitors feel like they are in love with them. She also gives the maids permission to say terrible things about herself and Odysseus so that the act is convincing. Eventually, one of the maids lets Penelope's secret slip. Penelope blames herself for this, as well as how the maids are treated by the suitors. One night, the suitors ambush Penelope while she is undoing the shroud and demand that she choose one of them as soon as the shroud is finished, this time with no delay.
Penelope is distraught, waiting desperately for Odysseus to return. Meanwhile, Telemachus gets more and more impatient. He begins telling his mother what to do and eventually decides that he is going to look for his father himself. After he leaves, Penelope is warned that the suitors are plotting to lay in wait, ambush his ship, and kill him. Eurycleia tells Penelope that she helped Telemachus sneak out, and that everything will work out fine in the end, because the gods are just. That night, Penelope is tormented by terrible dreams.
"The Chorus Line: Dreamboats, A Ballad"
In this chapter, the chorus sings about the escape offered by dreams. In dreams, they can imagine an idealized world where they experience true love: "In dreams we all are beautiful / In glossy crimson dresses; / We sleep with every man we love, / We shower them with kisses" (126). In real life, however, they are forced to submit to the same violence day in and day out: "But then the morning wakes us up; / Once more we toil and slave, / And hoist our skirts at their command / For every prick and knave" (126).
"News of Helen"
Telemachus makes it safely home, and Penelope is overjoyed to see him. However, almost immediately the two get into a big fight. Telemachus tells Penelope that he had every right in the world to take a ship and search for his father. Penelope is upset, but they make up and have dinner together. Telemachus has invited two friends along with him—Piraeus and Theoclymenus. After dinner, Penelope asks the three men about their trip and whether they had discovered anything about Odysseus's whereabouts.
Telemachus tells Penelope that he first went to visit King Nestor, who had no news. After that, he went to visit Menelaus, Helen's husband. Menelaus told Telemachus that Odysseus was trapped on the island of a beautiful goddess. Telemachus tells his mother that Helen spiked the drinks at dinner and looked beautiful—"'as radiant as golden Aphrodite'" (132). Penelope thanks Telemachus for telling her his discoveries and retires to pray for Odysseus's safe return.
Analysis
In these chapters, Penelope's struggles in Ithaca increase as she waits for Odysseus's return. Because Odysseus has been gone for so long, suitors begin to show up seeking Penelope's hand in marriage. These suitors pretend to be in love with Penelope because of her wit and beauty, but in fact, they simply want a chance at Penelope's fortune. Penelope knows this, however, she must pretend that she is appreciative of their advances and attention. This is because she is vastly outnumbered by the suitors and does not have anyone to protect her against them. She has to rely on her wit and comes up with the plan to put off choosing a suitor until the shroud she is working on is completed. Every night, she and twelve maids undo the previous day's work on the shroud, which keeps the suitors at bay for three years. This is Penelope's web, which has become an archetype in Western literature. Penelope expresses frustration at how the story has been told throughout the centuries: "The shroud itself became a story almost instantly. 'Penelope's web,' it was called; people used to say that of any task that remained mysteriously unfinished. I did not appreciate the term web. If the shroud was a web, then I was the spider. But I had not been attempting to catch men like flies: on the contrary, I'd merely been trying to avoid entanglement myself" (119).
Some readers might wonder why Penelope did not set an army against the suitors or send them away. Penelope must tolerate the suitors' presence in Ithaca because of Ancient Greek hospitality customs, which dictate that visitors be given food, shelter, enjoyment, and more. These hospitality customs are seen as a moral obligation, no matter who the visitors are or the circumstances surrounding their arrival. The suitors abuse this hospitality: they eat "as if to outdo all the others at eating" and sexually assault Penelope's maids (104). The suitors abuse the hospitality customs in the hopes of pressuring Penelope to choose one of them to marry. As Penelope laments, "their goal was to wear down my resistance with the threat of impoverishment" (104). Penelope also believes that if she tries to kick out the suitors, they will feel insulted at having hospitality denied them and "go on the rampage and snatch by force what they were attempting to win by persuasion" (108). Because of this, Penelope lives for years with the constant threat of harassment and violence by these men, who see her less as a person and more as a means to an end.
One of the ways that the suitors abuse hospitality customs in Ithaca is by making sexual advances towards and sexually assaulting the maids. This is an insult to Penelope not only because they are harming her beloved helpers. Because the maids are seen as property in the world of the Penelopiad, the suitors' "use" of the maids is likened to theft. Penelope explains: "To provide a lively night's entertainment was considered part of a good host's hospitality, and such a host would magnanimously offer his guests their pick of the girls—but it was most irregular for the servants to be used in this way without the permission of the master of the house. Such an act amounted to thievery" (116). In this way, Odysseus's absence puts not only Penelope's life at risk, but also the lives of his female servants, who are dehumanized by the gluttonous and greedy suitors. Penelope increases the risk to the maids because she asks them to spy on the suitors on her behalf. She expresses eventual regret at this decision: "this plan came to grief" (115).
When the maids are harmed by the suitors, Penelope takes special care of them and has them bathed in her oils. In "The Shroud," we see a different kind of relationship emerge between Penelope and her subordinates as they become co-conspirators while working on the shroud. Penelope depends on the maids for their assistance, support, and companionship. In fact, as they work together for more than three years, Penelope begins to see them as equals: "In the flickering light of the torches our daylight faces were softened and changed, and our daylight manners. We were almost like sisters" (114). This chapter shows us how class and gender work together in the Penelopiad. In the "daylight," Penelope and the maids must assume their roles, stuck in worlds that are vastly separate. However, at night, in the women's quarters where the weaving is done, the differences between these women shrink. They become teammates working towards the same goal: keeping the suitors at bay for the safety of the kingdom. This work is unseen and goes largely unrewarded, as is the case with most female labor in the Penelopiad. However, Penelope is able to forge a positive social connection and combat the loneliness that she drowns in during the day.
The theme of gender also rears its head in these chapters when it comes to Penelope's son, Telemachus. Despite the fact that Penelope has run the kingdom on her own for almost twenty years, once Telemachus comes of age, he begins to question his mother's authority. Eventually, Telemachus breaks out of the palace behind his mother's back and steals a ship to go looking for Odysseus. When he returns, he uses gendered terms to defend his actions: "He denied that he was a child any longer, and proclaimed his manhood—he'd come back, hadn't he, which was proof enough that he'd known what he was doing. . . He claimed his father would have been proud of him for showing some backbone and getting out from under the thumbs of the women, who as usual were being overemotional and showing no reasonableness and judgment" (128). This, understandably, hurts Penelope's feelings as she has been very reasonable and has displayed great intelligence in Odysseus's absence—two feats that have gone unthanked and unnoticed by either her son or her husband. Telemachus's feelings about his mother reflect attitudes about gender in Ancient Greece—Penelope will do as a leader as long as men are not around to take the reins from her. As soon as Telemachus is of age, it is assumed that he is the more worthy and intelligent head of the household, simply because of his gender.
