The Odyssey: How The Distribution of Power Impacts Societal Order, Equity, and The Oppression

In the Odyssey, we can constantly see how power affects the position of others in society. The Odyssey shows how who has power changes the leveling of society, who are equal, and who is oppressed. In book 1 we can see how women are expected to act and the jobs they must fulfill and serve. When Penelope complains about the music being played by the barter, Telemachus demands, 'So mother, go back to your quarters. Tend to your own tasks, the distaff and the loom, and keep the women working hard as well. As for giving orders, men will see to that, but I most of all: I hold the reins of power in this house”. This text is showing readers about the different gender roles, males and females play in the Odyssey. We can see that Telemachus demands that Penelope go back to working on her loom, showing that women have minimal to no power in society and mainly serve the men, who hold more power than women. 

Shortly after we can see Telemachus telling her to keep the women working hard. Instead of saying servants, or maids, the text states women, hinting that they are the lowest in the hierarchy. Through all of this we can see that men have more power than women because, as it suggests, Telemachus states that he will distribute the commands even though Penelope is older than Telemachus. In the Penelopiad, the distribution of a man's power over a womens impacts the societal order and affects equality by having the lower class suffer more. The 12 maids described in the Penelopiad can be described as suffering more due to their slave/maid and gender class compared to the higher class. In the Penelopiad it states, “Therefore, the maids were overpowered and they were also completely unprotected” (Atwood, 180). This quote is explaining the reason why they were raped and then killed, as they were unprotected from being raped by the suitors. This shows the unfairness of class by having the lower being unprotected by being harmed/raped by the suitors compared to Penelope or Euryclea, who never get treated like the maids because they are part of the higher class. 

In the Odyssey we can see Telemachus hanging the 12 maids for being raped by the suitors. Telemachus states, “You sluts- the suitors’ whores!”. This shows that they were punished for getting raped by the suitors and not having a choice due to their place in society as a lower class woman. In the literary canon, Emily Wilson, a female translator of the Odyssey shows that her translation is a “new way of thinking about it in the context of gender and power.” compared to all of the other translations by men which show women as weak and helpless. In the article it talks about how most men who translate the Odyssey like Robert Fagle often skip out on a certain adjective that describes Penelope’s hand, while Emily Wilson keeps it in. It states, “Homer describes her hand as pachus, or thick.” “There is a problem here,” Wilson writes, “since in our culture, women are not supposed to have big, thick, or fat hands.” Translators have usually solved the problem by skipping the adjective, or putting in something more traditional — Fagles mentions Penelope’s “steady hand.” Wilson, however, renders the moment this way: “Her muscular, firm hand/ picked up the ivory handle of the key”. Wilson allows her translated version of the Odyssey to show Penelope’s physical competence, which puts her as a character who plays a vital part in the book, not just some mindless woman, waiting for Odysseus to return. 

In the Odyssey, we can see the difference in gender and how power affects the lower class and how in the literary canon Emily Wilson chooses to keep her text going against all the previous translations of the Odyssey, adding the role Penelope, a woman, plays throughout the book. A reason for why GBN students should read the Odyssey would be to see the difference women have evolved from this book and its society, and to compare it to the current society along with its books, which shows that some women have an equal amount of power or even more to men which wasn’t always the case like in Ancient Greece from the Odyssey.