Penelope As Moral Agent

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familiar with and have not read any of the outside texts to which Foley refers (Aristotle's Oedipus Tyrannos, Poetics, Politics, and Ethics, the Hippocratic medical texts, and the feminist theory of Carol Gilligan), I can only assume that her interpretations of these texts are correct. In any case, she uses Aristotle and Hippocrates in order to develop a historical framework against which she can judge Homer's fictitious character Penelope. This method would have led to a good argument if she had included in her analysis an explanation of what constitutes a "Classical" writer and had specified whether or not Homer was included in that group. Direct connections she makes between the Odyssey and the outside texts are nominal. She neglects to explain why she would compare Penelope to Aristotle's ideas on the woman's role in society, or in what respect the biological findings of Hippocrates could have possibly have influenced or been influenced by Homer's epic. The only hint the reader ...

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one cannot generalize so easily from Oedipus to Penelope" (Foley 93). Additionally, on page 99, she resists using the term kurios or guardianship (one she used to determine Classical Athenian opinion about women's roles in decision-making) because the passages "raise serious doubt about the exact parameters involved in male guardianship of a wife in the Odyssey." Another (and more constructive) example of when the philosophy of Aristotle and the depiction by Homer of women and their roles and responsibilities in society is on page 108 in the last sentence of her essay: Insofar as tragic choices of the kind identified and praised by Aristotle are symptomatic of a social world in which ...

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