Gender Roles in Homeric Epic
I. Introduction
Homer’s epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, have long been (and continue to be) cited as one of the most influential works in Western history.[1]
In recent years, progress in feminism and questioning of traditional norms has led to an elevated sense of awareness for gender issues in various forms of media, including literary text. This essay seeks to relate these two topics (one long-standing, one modern) by engaging the following question: ‘To what extent do Homer’s negative portrayal of Helen in the Iliad and positive portrayal of Penelope in the Odyssey reflect Ancient Greek gender roles and expectations of women?’
In the following sections, Homer’s epics and gender roles in Ancient Greece will be related by first establishing existing gender expectations as we know them in Ancient Greece, and then a detailed analysis of the Homeric epics which serves to explicitly render the underlying support they give to these expectations. This is done through both thematic and linguistic analyses of Iliad and Odyssey using the Loeb library side-by-side English and Greek editions of the epics, which allows for analysis of both general character themes in translation and specific vocabulary and extract-based gendered language in the poems.
To go about answering the research question, general information on Homeric epic and classical Greece have been established with reference to classicists and Homeric scholars such as Thomas Dey Seymour.[2] Support from classical specialists and professors such as Ruby Blondell are further referenced to provide specialty knowledge about specific words and concepts (such as Blondell’s specialization and many papers on Helen) to bolster this paper’s slightly broader thesis.[3]
While many such specific papers exist, there are few that performed a true comparison of the connection between Penelope and Helen and positive and negative female gender roles in Ancient Greece. For this reason, this essay’s focus is worthy of exploration. Additionally, as historians and classicists have scarcely any sources from women themselves during this time, this analysis is critical to discovering at least what positive and negative role models (established by Homer) looked like for Greek women growing up in Ancient Greece.[4]
Furthermore, Homer’s historical and educational role in Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, and the later Western world continuing into the current time renders the topic significant.[5]
II. Background
a. Role and Importance of Homer
Homer’s epic poems, Iliad and Odyssey, are perhaps two of the most influential works in the western world.
Written down in the late 8th or 7th century B.C., the epics were referenced as a biblical text in the later writings of the sophists, philosophers, and intellectuals in the classical period.[6] Their influence continued into the Roman Empire, and classical education was the prominent form of education until almost modern times.
In the current day, their influence is still evident in the study of archaeology, language evolution, and even in fields such as politics and ethics. Likewise, their social implications remain relevant. At the very foundation of the Western world’s construal of the gender binary, Homer remains a critical source to achieve an understanding of subsequent gender roles and expectations from the ancient world to modern times.
b. Gender in Ancient Greece
In Ancient Greece, a variety of preconceived roles for the sexes can be seen on multiple levels.
The first of these was the male/female binary. While Lycurgus of Sparta departed from this tradition by equalizing male and female societal roles, much of Greece including Athens subscribed to the belief that man was the active member of society, who went out to war, was educated, participated in politics, and even attended entertainment events such as plays. In contrast, the woman’s role was maintained to be passive and submissive.
As democracy came to Athens in the classical period under Pericles, women did not gain suffrage as men did. This followed in the tradition (characterized by Homer) of differentiating the roles of men and women by physically separating them in society.[7]
A second binary existed within the definition of women themselves: that there were pious and morally upright women and impious or immoral women. These interpretations of a woman’s character were often allocated according to the activities she did or failed to perform, as well as her public visibility or lack thereof in Greek society.
III. Women in Ancient Greece
a. Expectations of Familial Roles
Women in Ancient Greece had very specific expectations and roles to act upon in Ancient Greek society. In Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History by Sarah B. Pomeroy et al., their expected roles are defined in the following manner: “Women [in Homer] are honored for their beauty, skill and diligence in weaving, careful household management, and good practical sense.”[8]
This, describing the expectation of women as defined by Homer, epitomizes the ideal of home-centeredness expected of women. Their marriages were arranged at a very young age, and women after marriage were expected to stay in the home and out of sight and mind.
Likely deriving from ideas described by Homer, this mindset was carried on to perhaps the most well-known era of Greek history, the golden age of around the 5th-3rd centuries BC, during which times Pericles would state that “A woman’s reputation is highest when men say little about her, whether it be good or evil.”[9]
During this time, women in Athens were so separated from society that they spoke a slightly different dialect.
b. Positive and Negative Attributes
In this way, a moral code of sorts was created for women and passed down through the generations to maintain the gendered power dynamic.
It consisted of two main values: subservience to men, and lack of self. The unofficial (and official) laws that guided women’s existence were sustained through a variety of practical day-to-day attributes such as: silence, deferral to the husband in all discussions, passivity of manner, lack of expressed interest in political and public affairs, and expressed loyalty to the home and household responsibilities.
Much of this was surface-level, and unfortunately, due to the insufficiency of sources written by women at this time, little is known of whether these beliefs were truly felt or resisted. However, it is evident that such a gendered system was sustained for a number of years, both through the attributes assigned as positive for women to have, and due to the limited and specific vocations that they were to pursue.[10]
c. Positive and Negative Vocations
A woman’s vocation and her steadfastness to it was the second factor that really contributed to the morality profile created for her by men.
Key among the vocations considered positive for women included housekeeping, weaving, and child-rearing. Note the themes of static existence and maternal instinct, relevant through current times in sexist discourses. In contrast, any departure from these specific vocations and their related fields were considered to be entirely untraditional, immoral, and were held in distain.
These themes are evident in Homer’s masterpieces, where his two most prominent female characters fully represent each pole of the morality binary for women. Helen of the Iliad, who causes the Trojan War, represents loss of virtue and remorse, while Homer’s Penelope from the Odyssey, who makes the war worth fighting for to Odysseus, embodies the Ancient Greek ideal of feminine passivity and virtuous home-centeredness.
IV. Gender in the Homeric Epics
a. Overview of Gender in Iliad and Odyssey
The Homeric epics parallel contemporary gender expectations of women in their positive and negative representations of them.
The poems yield very stark definitions of masculinity and femininity, and, within those, of good and bad elements within the sexes. In their article, “Homeric Masculinity: ΗΝΟΡΕΗ and ΑΓΗΝΟΡΙΗ,” Barbara Graziosi and Johannes Haubold describe expectations of men, arguing that “Whereas ἠνορέη is a positive quality best understood as ‘manliness’, ἀγηνορίη denotes ‘excessive manliness’ in a pejorative sense.”[11]
This demonstrates that types of masculinity associated with hubris were frowned upon, as seen in Achilles and Agamemnon in the Iliad. Similarly, women had different gender roles assigned to them. In the Iliad and the Odyssey, men are the warring and adventuring heroes, and women, including Helen and Penelope, are their prizes. In book three of the Iliad, Hector conveys this idea in the following passage:
“μῦθον Ὰλεξὰνδροιο, τοῦ εἴνεκα νεῖκος ὄρωρεν.
ἄλλοθς μὲν κέλεται Τρῶας καὶ πάντας Ἀχαιοὺσ
τεύχεα κάλ᾽ ἀποθέσθαι ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ,
90 αὐτὸν δ᾽ ἐν μέσςῳ καὶ ἀρηίφιλον Μενέλαον
οἴους ἀμφ᾽ Έλένῃ καὶ κτήμαρσι πᾶσι μάχεσθαι.
Όππότερος δε κε νικήςῃ κρείσσων τε γένηται,
κτήμαθ᾽ έλὼν ἐὺ πάντα γυναῖκά τε οἴκαδ᾽ ἀγέσθω
οἱ δ᾽ ἄλλοι φιλότητα καὶ ὄρκια πιστὰ τάμωμεν.”[12]
“…He [Alexander] asks that they lay aside their fair armor on the bounteous earth, and that he himself between the armies together with Menelaus, dear to Aries, do battle in single combat for Helen and all her possessions. And whoever wins, and proves himself the better man, let him duly take all the wealth and the woman, and take them home…”[13]
Here, women are equated to possessions, as Helen is portrayed as loot to be taken along with the treasure once the collected armies of Greece had taken Troy (her kidnapping was, after all, the catalyst for the war). There is a contrast set up between the passive role of the wife (Helen) and the active role of her husband (Menelaus) who must engage in combat to secure her freedom.
In the Odyssey, these active and passive roles are maintained, with Odysseus’ journey being followed throughout the story, and Penelope existing merely as a prize for him to attain upon his return. Further, she exemplifies all of the vocational ideas explored above. However, the two characters begin to diverge as Homer paints their roles: Helen as a catalyst for and Penelope marking the return from the war.
b. Portrayal of Helen in Iliad
In the Iliad, Helen of Troy is portrayed negatively to represent an undesirable set of characteristics and actions.
A researched article on Helen by Classics and adjunct Women’s Studies professor Ruby Blondell describes Homer’s rendition of her: “With her array of ambiguous and sometimes contradictory traits, the epic Helen embodies the kalon kakon, the irreducible complex of beauty and evil…”[14] In this way, Helen is very closely related to the war, and this is used to develop the negative aspects of her character.
In Ancient Greek literature, beauty is often related to the idea of terror. This is a theme throughout the Iliad, appearing in the language: “Παλλάδ᾽ Ἁθηναίην. Δεινὼ δέ οἱ ὄσσε φάανθεν” “…Pallas Athene; and terribly did her eyes flash” a beautiful and oft-cited line of the poem, in which the frightful nature of the gods is juxtaposed with the Greeks’ awe and worship of them.
Thematically, this contrast is shown in the idea of war: the beauty of brotherhood, loyalty, bravery, and mixing with the gods, but with the cost of lives and the sacrificing of morals. Helen herself is often portrayed as a direct parallel to these ideas: a living contrast, she is strikingly beautiful, but so much so that all the Hellenistic peoples were willing to wage terrible war over her.
While the Greeks valued beauty, they often portrayed it as one of woman’s tricks that would bring about the moral downfall of man; here, it seems, this is also true, as she (or her kidnapping) brought about a seemingly disproportionate almost 10-year long war (and a return journey just as long, for some such as Odysseus).
Another aspect of Helen’s alleged immoral behavior is the infidelity involved in her kidnapping. When considering this through the lens of the Ancient Greek world, this perhaps encompasses not only literal adultery, but any situation in which a woman was separated from her home and husband in favor of another.
Clearly, Helen seems to have had no choice in the matter (although whether or not she fought against her abduction remains unclear), but often in classical literature cases of rape are still associated with immorality and infidelity on the part of the woman involved. This is paralleled, metaphorically at least, in Helen’s case. Her laments at her involvement in the war are portrayed in this statement from book three:
“ὡσ ὄφελεν θάνατός μοι ἁδεῖν κακὸσ ὁππότε δεῦρο
υἱέι σῷ ἑπόμην, θάλαμον γνωτούς τε λιποῦσα
175 παῖδά τε τηλυγέτην καὶ ὁμηλικίην ἐρατεινήν.
ἀλλὰ τά γ᾽ οὐκ ἐγένοντο. Τὸ καὶ κλαίουσα τέτηκα.”[15]
“I wish that evil death had been pleasing to me when I followed your son here, and left my bridal chamber and my kinspeople and my daughter, well-beloved, and the lovely companions of my girlhood. But that was not to be; so I pine away with weeping.”[16]
This declaration, given by Helen declaring her own misconducts and remorse, demonstrates underlying sentiments of self-blame and reconfirms the blame that appears to be placed on her. It evinces a theme of the loss of virtue of a woman who has transgressed the moral code laid out by tradition.
Under a different light, however, the agency implicit in her ability to blame herself could alternatively be seen as self-assertion and rejection of these values. Classicist Ruby Blondell argues that “In contrast to the men who objectify her, then, Helen takes responsibility for her own role in her original transgression and implies, by its reenactment, that the impulse that led to it has not been quenched.”[17]
In this way, through her transgression, she has given men fighting in the war the chance to earn what is described in Greek as κλέος, or great glory or report. This serves to demonstrate how Helen’s perceived immorality and objectification as a woman leads to the furthering of the masculine agenda of heroism, bringing into more vivid relief the juxtaposition of the different roles of men and women through her own perceived immorality.
c. Portrayal of Penelope in Odyssey
In the Odyssey, Penelope of Ithaca is portrayed positively and represents desirable characteristics of a woman during the Homeric era and thereafter.
While Helen is portrayed as a reason to wage war, Penelope serves as the motivation to return home from war. Before the Trojan War had even begun, Homer describes how Odysseus feigned insanity in an attempt (which failed) to stay home from the war to stay with his wife and son.
From the outset, Penelope is set up as a constant; the opposite of war, she represented the home, the hearth, weaving, fruitfulness — all of the characteristics that defined what Greeks found to be a morally upright and ‘good’ woman. According to classical archaeologist Beth Cohen, “most Classical writers assume that any nonreligious public activity performed by a woman violates the silence, invisibility, and moral dependence appropriate to a virtuous wife.”[18]
Throughout the Odyssey, Penelope never abandons her home or seeks to expose herself to the world. By her unwillingness to mingle with any of the suitors or even show her face to the visitors, she demonstrates the epitome of womanly virtue espoused by the Greeks.
As opposed to Helen, Penelope’s κλέος was self-earned through memory: Melissa Mueller notes that “Women in the Homeric epics ‘remember’ differently from men. This difference contributes to the distinctive quality of Penelope’s kleos in the Odyssey as well as, more generally, to the characterization of the ideal wife in archaic and classical Greece.”[19] In the last book of the Odyssey, the ghost of Agamemnon connects the idea of remembrance to Penelope’s fidelity and virtuous nature:
195 “ … ὡσ εὖ μέμνητ᾽ Ὀδυςῆος,
ἀνδρὸς κοθριδίου. Τῷ οἱ κλέος οὔ ποτ᾽ ὀλεῖται
ἧσ ἀρετῆσ, τεύξουσι δ᾽ ἐπιχθονίοισιν ἀοιδὴν
ἀθάνατοι χαρίεσσαν ἐχέφρονι Πηνελοπείῃ”[20]
“…How well she kept before her the image of Odysseus, her wedded husband! Therefore the fame of her excellence shall never perish, but the immortals shall make among men on earth a song full of delight in honor of constant Penelope.”[21]
In this, the idea of μιμνήσκεσθαι (remembering) is closely wound up with Penelope’s κλέος due to her memory of Odysseus and patience in waiting for him led to her great renown as a woman.[22] In this way, Penelope is shown to display the positive characteristics of memory, faithfulness, and absolute devotion toward her husband which are featured as positive models for feminine behavior.
Penelope’s role in Odysseus’ οἶκος (oikos), or household, is further evidence of her positive representation as a traditional female. In the Ancient Greek city state, οἶκοι were fundamental household units consisting of the man, his wife, children, parents, and servants, and his other possessions including property and slaves.
Its primary use in the Odyssey is to describe the household of Odysseus in Ithaca, from which he is absent for much of the epic. Consistent with the importance the Greeks placed in the role of the man in running the household, the Odyssey serves to show what happens when the dominant male figure is removed from the equation; following in the Greeks’ expectation, the house is eventually overrun by suitors that Penelope is unable to control and Odysseus arrives back in time to rescue his home and his possessions, including his wife.
Penelope’s failure to sustain the οἶκος was likely positive rather than negative in the eyes of the Greeks; she was fulfilling her passive duty by maintaining her usual household duties but did not have the authority or license to renounce hospitality.
This points to a major scholarly debate surrounding Penelope: Is she an independent character, or simply a substituent of Odysseus’ οἶκος and thereby merely an extension of his will? In the dominant patriarchal interpretation of her role, she is most often considered to fulfill the traditional role of the woman, as her independent acts of mind are performed for the purpose of maintaining loyalty and tradition.
Perhaps her most famous act of intelligence was the shroud that she wove while Odysseus was away, which she wove during the day and unraveled during the night to postpone the day when it would be finished and when she promises to choose a suitor. While a demonstration of her shrewdness, this action actually substantiates her positive portrayal as uphold traditional values because it is done to sustain her fidelity and loyalty to Odysseus.
Here, it seems, activeness is acceptable in a woman if it is to fulfill the will of a man and not for selfish purposes. Furthermore, the fact that she was weaving solidifies her customary role in Odysseus’ οἶκος as weaving was seen in Ancient Greece as a particular symbol of womanly virtue, the skill of which was passed down from mother to daughter as part of her training in duties of the house.
In these ways, Penelope’s portrayal is underscored both by a compliance with the general rules that surround traditional piety and the literal actions that execute it.
V. Conclusion
The Homeric vision for the role of the woman on the level of her individual actions, her responsibilities within the family, and her place in the city state and nation transcend mere character creation and are representative of a set of gendered values that would undergird gender roles for hundreds — even thousands — of years.
Helen embodied the poetic intermingling of beauty and evil which renders her an entrancing character but reinforces the negative notions of women as a necessary evil causing conflict among men when they leave the home and, by extension, the control of men. This reversal of roles — Helen causing the Trojan War — would be a fascinating declaration of self and rebellion from tradition but is incompletely so as Homer emphasizes her remorse and due to the fact that her kidnapping renders her role in the revolt indirect.
Penelope’s fidelity, loyalty, and focus on Odysseus’ return renders her as the realization of the virtuous ideals of women constructed for them by men. Not only are her values consistent with those women were supposed to have in Ancient Greece, but her literal actions (such as weaving) were a direct nod to Greek symbols of submission and wifely passivity.
In this way, Homer’s epics are consistent with social tradition in their positive and negative portrayals of their most prominent female roles. This is significant given their immense impact on the Western world through education, as previously discussed. In the modern world, this implies that while engaging with these seminal works of literary masterpiece, it is important to not only look at them within their own time, but also through the critical lens of modernity to ascertain the extent to which our own world of gender expectations is premised on that of the classical world.
Glossary
VII: Glossary
I. Κλέος………………………………………………………………………“Kleos” — Renown or glory
II. Μιμνήσκεσθαι…………………………………………………“Mimneskesthai” — The act of remembering
III. Oἶκος (plural: οἶκοι)………………………………………….”Oikos/oikoi” — The family and its property/house; often construed as the property of the man/runner of the household
IV. Καλόν κακόν…………………………………………………..“kalon kakon” — The beautiful-evil thing. Used by Hesiod to describe the first woman. Denotes woman as a necessary evil, and suggestive of the intermingling of beauty and evil.
Notes
[1] Peter Toohey, Reading Epic: An Introduction to the Ancient Narratives (London, England: Routledge, 1992), Accessed April 7, 2019, https://www.questiaschool.com/library/108835044/reading-epic-an-introduction-to-the-ancient-narratives.
[2] See Thomas Day Seymour, Life in the Homeric Age (New York, NY: Biblo and Tannen, 1963), Accessed November 29, 2018, https://www.questiaschool.com/library/104592815/life-in-the-homeric-age.
[3] See Ruby Blondell, “Refractions of Homer’s Helen in Archaic Lyric,” The American Journal of Philology 131, no. 3 (Fall 2010): 350, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40983352. and Ruby Blondell, “‘Bitch That I Am’: Self-Blame and Self-Assertion in the Iliad,” Transactions of the American Philological Association140, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 27, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40652048.
[4] Toohey, Reading Epic, 2.
[5] Ibid., 1.
[6] Ibid., 2.
[7] Sarah B. Pomeroy et al., Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History, 4th ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018), 79.
[8] Ibid., 80.
[9] Jeremy McInerney, “Ancient Greek Civilization: Lecture 18, ‘Sex and Gender,’” lecture, audio file, 10:27, The Great Courses Plus, accessed November 22, 2018, https://guidebookstgc.snagfilms.com/323_Ancient_Greek_Civilization.pdf.
[10] Barbara A. Olsen, “The Worlds of Penelope: Women in the Mycenaean and Homeric Economies,” Arethusa 48, no. 2 (Spring 2015): 120, Accessed April 7, 2019, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1716891198?accountid=2996.
[11] Barbara Graziosi and Johannes Haubold, “Homeric Masculinity: ΗΝΟΡΕΗ and ΑΓΗΝΟΡΙΗ,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 123 (2003): 60, https://doi.org/10.2307/3246260.
[12] Homer, Iliad 3.87–94. Note: Greek citations are referenced according to standard book and line format for Homeric epics, but corresponding English citations are referenced with page numbers because the Murray translation is in prose and does not indicate corresponding lines.
[13] Homer, Iliad: Books 1–12, trans. A. T. Murray, ed. William F. Wyatt, 2nd ed., vol. 1, Iliad, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 135.
[14] Ruby Blondell, “Refractions of Homer’s Helen in Archaic Lyric,” The American Journal of Philology 131, no. 3 (Fall 2010): 350, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40983352.
[15] Homer, Iliad 3.173–176.
[16] Homer, Iliad: Books 1–12, 141.
[17] Ruby Blondell, “‘Bitch That I Am’: Self-Blame and Self-Assertion in the Iliad,” Transactions of the American Philological Association140, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 27, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40652048.
[18] Beth Cohen, The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer’s Odyssey (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1995), 94, https://www.questiaschool.com/library/3284712/the-distaff-side-representing-the-female-in-homer-s.
[19] Melissa Mueller, “Penelope and the Poetics of Remembering,” Arethusa 40, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 337, https://search.proquest.com/docview/221118241?accountid=2996.
[20] Homer Odyssey 24.195–198.
[21] Homer, Odyssey: Books 13–24, trans. A. T. Murray, ed. George E. Dimock, 2nd ed., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 2:427.
[22] Mueller, “Penelope and the Poetics,” 337.
