Examples Of Fidelity In The Odyssey

Throughout the first eighteen books of The Odyssey, one of the central themes in the epic is the double standard of fidelity in Odysseus’ time. Women who werent faithful were shunned in the society, but when Men were unfaithful, not much was made of it. The relationship of Penelope and Odysseus gives us a prime example of this as Penelope wards of the suitors, refusing to move on from Odysseus where as Odysseus was intimate with other women on numerous occasions on his journey back to his homeland of Ithaca. In books 1 and 2 a main focus of the story is placed on Penelope’s resistance towards the many numerous suitors courting her. Although its been twenty years since Odysseus first went off to war, and ten years since the war ended, Penelope feels some sense of entitlement to Odysseus, and uses her savyness to combat the suitors persistence. Penelope could easily choose one of the suitors to start a new
Penelope plays with the suitors minds and misleads them, risking her chance at ever remarrying in hopes that by some slim chance Odysseus is still alive. In today’s society,
It’s very unfair that Penelope was at home being so faithful to Odysseus not even knowing he was still alive, but Odysseus unremorsefully spends the seasons making love to Circe as if he didn’t have a wife and kid back home. Earlier in the story Penelope was made out to be wrong for leading on the suitors, but Odysseus’ non marital relations with Circe are very palely described as if it is nothing out of the usual. Although today polygamy is still more often seen and accepted from men, it seems as if in the times of The Odyssey, women didn’t even have a right to be upset should their husband chose to love elsewhere, and neither did their husbands feel guilty about doing