Women's Role In The Odyssey Essay

      Circe and Calypso, while very tricky and sly, are still very strong feminine characters.  Circe takes Odysseus' crew and turns them into swine; when Odysseus is able to resist her spell, due to the Moly he had been given by Hermes, she is dismayed and takes him as her lover. She is mysterious and seductive and is strong even up against Odysseus.  Calypso is a sea nymph who keeps Odysseus captive for nine years, hoping to make him her husband.  She is a strong-willed temptress whose sultry ways are able to reel in even the most determined man.

The Odyssey, by Homer, was written with the Greek mindset that women were supposed to be submissive. If the woman in question was not submissive enough, she was depicted as cruel, selfish, a monster, or a whore. This is true for both mortal women, such as Penelope, and immortal goddesses, such as Calypso. Mortal women were expected to be good faithful wives who listened to everything the head of the household said, while goddesses were expected to follow the gods every order and were called sexist slurs if they ever got involved with a mortal man.

This time spent on Circe's island was a test of whether he could resist lust from a goddess, and he fails. At first it appears as though the only reason Odysseus sleeps with Circe is to regain his companions, but she easily persuades them to stay. What makes it worse is the fact that Odysseus is not even the first one ready to go. His men are the ones who urge him to leave: "What ails you now? It is time to think about our own country" (Book X, line 472). At a glance, it appears that Odysseus is merely succumbing to Circe's schemes for reasons related to their health and well being, if we read between the lines, we soon begin to realize that Odysseus is weak in the voracious hands of lust. Odysseus arrives on Calypso's island in her cave. At first, it seems like Odysseus doesn't seem much to mind her taking care of him, but over time it is plainly evident that he is unhappy with her. When Hermes arrives on Calypso's island to give her the message from Zeus to release Odysseus, he is bawling on the beach-- a daylong activity for him. Calypso is holding him with her by force; she has no companions to help him back to Ithaca, nor has she a ship to send him in. Athena pleads with Zeus to give Odysseus good fortune,

Women play an influential role in The Odyssey. Women appear throughout the story, as goddesses, wives, princesses, or servants. The nymph Calypso enslaves Odysseus for many years. Odysseus desires to reach home and his wife Penelope. It is the goddess Athena who sets the action of The Odyssey rolling; she also guides and orchestrates everything to Odysseus’ good. Women in The Odyssey are divided into two classes: seductresses and helpmeets. By doing so, Homer demonstrates that women have the power to either hinder of help men. Only one woman is able to successfully combine elements of both classes: Penelope. She serves as a role model of virtue and craftiness. All the other women are compared to and contrasted with Penelope.

While Penelope is pursued vigorously by some of Ithaca’s most powerful men, this lust is shown to give Penelope some leverage of her own. The Suitors themselves say “, (Telemachus) it’s your own dear mother, the matchless queen of cunning. Look here. For three years now, getting on to four, she’s played it fast and loose with all our hearts, building each man’s hopes(96).” While Penelope remained heartbroken, awaiting Odysseus’ return, she was able to tug on the hearts of her suitors to postpone her forced marriage for years. Circe doesn’t just seduce men for her own protection, she seduces men to

     Many people regard Homer’s epics as war stories—stories about men; those people often overlook the important roles that women play in the Odyssey. While there are not many female characters in the Odyssey, the few that there are, play pivotal roles in the story and one can gain a lot of insight by analyzing how those women are portrayed. Homer portrays the females in contradictory ways: the characters of Athena and Eurykleia are given strong, admirable roles while Melantho, the Sirens and Circe are depicted in a much more negative way. Penelope—the central female character—is given both negative and positive attributes.

Does Homer exhibit gender bias in the Odyssey?  Is the nature of woman as depicted in the Odyssey in any way revealing? Upon examining the text of the Odyssey for differential treatment on men and women, it becomes necessary to distinguish between three possible conclusions.  One, differences in treatment reflect the underlying Homeric thesis that  women are "different but equal in nature,"  Two, different treatment  of men and women in the text reflect a thesis that women are "different and unequal in nature" -- arguments about misogyny fall in here but a host of other interpretive possibilities are possible too. Three, the different treatment reflects simple ignorance. How much do we attribute what we discover to male authorship -- or

Another example of how the rules and expectations for women did not apply to men in The Odyssey is when Eumaeus, the loyal swine herdsman of Odysseus, recounts how he came to Ithaca as a captive of a slave woman, Phoinikia. This woman was seduced by a roaming seafarer who, '…made such love to her as women in their frailty are confused by, even the best of them.'; The god Artemis later kills Phoinikia for her 'treachery.';

Women form an important part of the folk epic, written by Homer, The Odyssey. Within the story there are three basic types of women: the goddess, the seductress, and the good hostess/wife. Each role adds a different element and is essential to the telling of the story.

Women are important to the plot and overall theme of the Odyssey. In fact, without many of the women there would not be a complex plot to this epic poem. In the narrative and in Greek society women played a variety of roles, as mothers, herons, and many other strong roles yet, they were treated as less significant, and were made to be loyal and submissive to men. The women were required to wait on and sulk for love, as Penelope did for 20 years. In Greek society, the women had very little authority but the little control that they did have was sort of a sexual power, which at times they could use to outwit the men. Obvious examples of this sexual power would be Circe and Calypso. Calypso and Circe however, are not the

The Odyssey includes many women characters, differing from strong, powerful women to women that don’t have a meaningful role in the story. Some women in the story include Penelope, Athena, and Leucothea. These women play a role in Odysseus’s journey and life.

The first woman that I think caused Odysseus problems on his journey is Calypso. Calypso, her name meaning “the concealer” in Greek, using her beauty kept Odysseus captive on her island for seven years. “He is left to languish in misery in the island home of Calypso, who keeps him captured there.” (Page 63) Odysseus is upset because firstly on the island of Ogygia, Odysseus is powerless: he is no

Women’s Role For many years, Homer gave women the roles of seducers, monsters, gods, and even victims. He portrays them as malignant and strong-headed. All of them are all equal in their own way. In The Odyssey, Homer justifies portraying women as manipulative by showing them as strong-headed. Circe, a goddess enchantress, seduces Odysseus’ men to drink her potion.

Women are portrayed as seductresses. Odysseus and his crew arrive on the island of Circe, lured in by the sound of her voice. Homer describes her as "Low she sang/ in her beguiling voice,

Since the beginning of time, women have always been looked down upon mentally. During the time period of The Odyssey and Lysistrata, women were known as less powerful gender. They have never had much say about what goes on around them. Some women were recognized as a sex symbol. In The Odyssey, some women were goddesses that just wanted sex and other women had to stay at home to help raise their kids and do all of the feminine work. Compared to The Odyssey, in Lysistrata, women denied sex against their men to get what they want. In addition, they did not have many political rights and a say so on what goes on in their country. In comparing both of these stories, women show similarities toward each other.