The Penelopiad

Finally, Penelope describes the circumstances by which her husband leaves for twenty years. Though she has settled into Ithaca somewhat, she still feels quite isolated. Due to her status, she has very little freedom, and her mother-in-law and nurse, Eurycleia, took care of all of the domestic duties with which she might otherwise busy herself.

Here, too, Penelope shows the origin of certain parts of Odysseus’s identity that serve to identify him when he returns from Troy. She mentions the unmovable bed (one post is an olive trunk still in the ground), and his bow that can be strung only by him—both facts that Penelope uses to identify him upon his return in The Odyssey.

She also tells the story of how Helen had already been captured once before, as a child, by Theseus and Peirithous, and how her brother saved her then, too, by waging a successful war. In Penelope’s telling, Helen loved the sacrifices her capture had required: “The part of the story she enjoyed the most was the number of men who’d died in the Athenian war: she took their deaths as a tribute to herself” (75).

Of course, word then came that Helen had once again started a war, having run off with Paris, Prince of Troy.