The Odyssey - Gender Roles

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or of a similar cultural background, gives such a prominent position to women. No reader of the Odyssey can help having vivid memories of the poem’s outstanding female characters. There are many women in the Odyssey and all of them contribute in mean-ingful ways to the development of the action. Furthermore, they are treated seriously and with respect by the poet, as if there were no difference between his attitude toward them and his feelings toward the chieftains for whom his epic was composed. Among the memorable women in the poem are Nausicaa, the innocent young maiden; Arete, the wise and benevolent queen and mother; Circe and Calypso, the sultry and mysterious temptresses; Penelope, the ideal of marital devotion and fidelity; Helen, the respectable middle-class matron with a past; and others, like Eurycleia and Mel-antho, who have much smaller roles, but equally well defined personalities. Finally, there is Athene, the goddess, who more than any other of these ...

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