Roles Of Women In The Iliad And The Odyssey

The Iliad and the Odyssey, two remarkable poems compared The Iliad and The Odyssey, two poems widely celebrated and read deal with the struggles and hardships of mortal life as well as events that occur due to the God’s bickering and favouritism. Although they are different in terms of setting, such as the phenomena of human interaction, aggression and competition vs the struggles of a character's journey home they have a vast similarity in how the poems incorporate the role of women, the relationships between Gods and mortals, as well as character traits such as wrath, pride, and greed. The women characters in both poems played a role in how the women were as well as how they were portrayed in ancient greek society. Women were
The women in Homer's epics are portrayed differently through the characters own personalities yet they all fall in similar categories. They were portrayed as possession, motherly figures, and temptresses with the exception of the goddesses who were portrayed as cunning, and powerful. Take Calypso for instance, although she has power “ you would stay where you are, keep house along with me, and let me make you immortal,” she has to obey what the Gods especially Zeus orders. She delivers an impassioned indictment about the double standards of male gods complaining how men of the mortal world as well as male gods can get away from promiscuous behavior, yet society expects females to be faithful at all times. In the Iliad women were portrayed mostly as possessions or women who had little or no control over their destiny. “The epic poem, generally regarded as “a male-dominated world” focuses centrally on the rage between men but it also happen that most of the time this rage is affected, initiated, and inspired by a woman.” For example, Chryseis and Briseis, they were captured maidens who were also the reason why the