ght of Derby’s Penelope Unravelling her Web by Lamp-light (1785). By her son’s bedside, and under the watchful eye of Odysseus’ statue, Penelope ensured that she would remain faithful to her husband alone.
But as time went by, the suitors wondered why the shroud grew in size only very slowly. One of Penelope’s household revealed the subterfuge, and the queen was forced to use other techniques. Telemachus was sent by Athena to discover what had happened to his father.
It is after the return of Telemachus, when Odysseus himself is back on Ithaca, that Ovid’s fictional letter was written by Penelope. Robinet Testard’s miniature, illustrating an early French translation of the Heroides, shows Penelope (c 1510) writing it.
Often assumed to be the ultimate expression of marital fidelity, Ovid’s letter, which opens his Heroides (meaning ‘heroines’), is far more perceptive and insightful. It addresses the restless fear that comes in true love. It recounts, with some curious inaccuracies, some of the events of the Trojan War which must have had greatest impact on Odysseus’ family. It accepts her husband’s inevitable unfaithfulness over those twenty years, during which Penelope has remained steadfast and chaste. It explains how important a father would have been to Telemachus as he grew up.
Ovid’s fiction is the prototype of every letter which could be written by the partner of any man who goes to war (and more).
There has been long debate as to whether, at that time, Penelope already knew that Odysseus had returned. What followed, and is so often skipped over in readings of the Odyssey, is actually its entire purpose, and the climax of the epic.
Penelope set the suitors the challenge of shooting a single arrow from Odysseus’ bow through the heads of a dozen axes: a task which none can attain. This is shown brilliantly in Lovis Corinth’s wall painting Odysseus in the Battle with the Suitors (1913), for the Villa Katzenbogen.
The only person who could string the bow and achieve this task was Odysseus himself. Having confirmed his identity, Odysseus, Telemachus, and two servants, with Athena herself, proceed to slaughter the suitors.
This scene of carnage was the motif for Gustave Moreau’s unfinished The Suitors (c 1852-1885), in which (Pallas) Athena, or Minerva, dominates. In his repeated reworking, Moreau came to obscure the figure of Odysseus, who is seen holding his bow in the doorway at the back, an owl above his head. Moreau would perhaps have done better to have considered the strength and endurance not of Athena, but of Penelope herself.
In 2005, about 2700 years after Homer’s Odyssey became the epic that we know today, Margaret Atwood’s novel The Penelopiad finally told Penelope’s story.