Helen and Penelope in The Iliad and The Odyssey

As for the loser, in their midst Akhilleus

whose value was four oxen. Standing there,

who will contend for this one" (Homer, Iliad 13.808-13).

Consider this image when considering the portrayal and role of women in The Iliad and The Odyssey: A battlefield on which men heroically fight to the death. The ground is littered with their bodies. But underneath the gore and carnage of the men's bodies are the twisted and bound bodies of live women on their backs. The above visual is an attempt to distill the apparent role of women in general and Helen and Penelope in particular in Homer's world and the world he depicts in his poems. Rather than individual persons who control their lives and their environment, women in The Iliad and The Odyssey operate as pawns controlled by the men who control the world in which they live. They serve as currency for war and peace and honor.

In The Western Canon, Harold Bloom states that The Iliad "teaches the surpassing glory of armed victory" (Bloom 29). The poem does so by exploring the heroic ideal and its contradictions. It begins with the quarrel between Agamemnon and Akhilleus over the body of two women, Khryseis and Briseis. Agamemnon must give Khryseis up to escape her father's wrath, but he takes Briseis from Akhilleus in revenge. In anger, Akhilleus deserts the Greek forces and takes Patroklos with h

. . .
n this world, one does not lightly choose to incur the wrath of the gods. In The Iliad, the men on the battlefield revere and hate the gods according to whether they are favored or disfavored by them. The gods act very much like humans, but the men appreciate that they are not. They know that the gods have the power of their own mortality in their hands and, thus, if for only that reason, are to be feared. They fight valiantly against Hector, however, even knowing that he has been granted favor by Zeus because one of the tenets of the heroic ideal is courage even in the face of certain death. Helen is as much at the mercy of the gods as are the men on the battlefield. In response to Helen's plea that she not be forced to lay with her Trojan husband after he has been beaten in battle by her Greek husband, Aphrodite replies: "Better not be so difficult. . . . I can make hatred for you grow/ amid both Trojans and Danaans,/ and if I do, you'll come to a bad end" (Iliad 3.501-06). Helen is no different from the men in that respect. She is unhappy with her situation in Troy but she believes that she must live through this because the gods have ordered it: "You [Hektor] are the one afflicted most/ by harlotry in me and by [Pari
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1670
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)