Women in Homers Odyssey Essay -- Odyssey Homer Essays Papers

     Ã‚  Ã‚   As Agamemnon tells Odysseus, â€Å"Let it be a warning even to you. Indulge a woman never, and never tell her all you know. Some things a man may tell, some he should cover up.† (P.199, Book XI) This is not a revelation for the wayward King. Odysseus treats all women he encounters with the same caution alluded to by Agamemnon when the shade tells him how his treacherous wife Clytemnestra acted in a way that defiled all women kind. Agamemnon is giving words to the concept of women that existed in Greek times, and still exists today although it is hopefully not expressed as much. Even before Odysseus speaks to his dead friend, he reveals the same attitude in the encounters that he has with women along his journey home. Each and every major female character Odysseus comes into contact with uses deception if not to Odysseus directly then to the outside world. In turn, the wandering King deals in deception with them as well.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The first woman that we see in direct contact with Odysseus is Kalypso. This Goddess is no stranger to deceit. She has been hiding from the Gods for 7 years something that is unnatural. She has been hiding her affair with the mortal Odysseus, who has been held captive on her island for that time. She is not innocent in her ... ...sentations and Interpreting the Odyssey," by Seth Schein, pp. 17-27. Helene Foley, "Penelope as Moral Agent," in Beth Cohen, ed., The Distaff Side (Oxford 1995), pp. 93-115. "The Odyssey, History, and Women," by A. J. Graham, pp. 3-16, and Jennifer Neils, "Les Femmes Fatales: Skylla and the Sirens in Greek Art," pp. 175-84. Lillian Doherty, Siren Songs: Gender, Audiences, and Narrators in the Odyssey (Ann Arbor 1995), esp. chapter 1. Marilyn Arthur Katz, Penelope's Renown: Meaning and Indeterminacy in the Odyssey (Princeton 1991). Nancy Felson-Rubin, Regarding Penelope: From Courtship to Poetics (Princeton 1994).