Gender Roles In The Odyssey

In ancient Greek society, the purpose of women was to bear children and take care of the household. Penelope in the Odyssey was expected to wait patiently for Odysseus to return from the Trojan War. While doing so, she was expected to keep herself occupied with household chores such as weaving and spinning. Medea was expected to passively and obediently go into exile after her husband Jason decided to marry another woman. Penelope and Medea, the leading women in their respective Greek works both fulfill and go against their prescribed gender roles. Penelope skillfully went against gender roles but only in order to keep her family united, while Medea went against her gender role in a violent, vengeful way that destroyed her family. Penelope from the Odyssey adhered closely to the expectations Greek society placed on women. She possessed womanly characteristics prescribed to women such as loyalty and patience, which she displayed when she waited 10 years for Odysseus to return. In the beginning of the epic, Penelope was upset when the bard was singing about the Trojan War. In response, Telemachus told Penelope, “Go therefore back in the house, and take up your own work, the loom and the distaff, and see to it that your handmaidens ply their work also; but the men must see to discussion, all men but I most of all. For mine
She said, “For I shall kill my own children there is none that can give them safety.”(26) The nature of a typical woman is to be compassionate and nurturing. Medea’s decision to murder her own children was the farthest divergence from her expected nature as a woman. Medea told the women of Corinth, “…What they say of us is that we have a peaceful time living at home, while they do the fighting in war. How wrong are they! I would very much rather stand three times in the front of battle than bear one