Penelope

Penelope is a pretty interesting character in The Odyssey who seems to get the short end of the stick a lot, starting in the very first book when Telemachus tells her to shut up and go to bed. Both Agamemnon and Athena (although Athena is maybe tapping into Telemachus' fears more than just being bitter like Agamemnon) warn about her potential disloyalty.

However, the text frequently calls her "wise Penelope," and while her first trick of weaving and unraveling the shroud to put off the suitors isn't really appreciated, when she gets the suitors to give her gifts (although this is arguably pretty inspired by Athena... but is there a character in the epic poem who isn't manipulated by Athena in some way or another?), "staunch Odysseus glowed with joy to hear all this." Odysseus really doesn't have any terrible moments with Penelope as far as I can remember -- he doesn't call Agamemnon out, but he just seems to ignore the comments. When Penelope starts crying when Odysseus-in-disguise talks about Odysseus (of course), "Odysseus' heart went out to his grief-stricken wife."

I think it's kind of cool that Athena gets to be the featured goddess in this story and gets to be all badass etc. but I do wish Penelope had a bit more of a role in the story -- Telemachus and Odysseus have exciting travels but Penelope seems to just kind of sit around in the palace and cry. Still, it's nice that the gender politics in The Odyssey (a big example outside of Penelope is Calypso's rant about sexual double standards among the gods) are a little more complicated than one might expect from ancient Greece.

Crying

The Odyssey is surprisingly pretty fun to read for an epic poem (I didn't get along with Paradise Lost nearly as well). We've talked about a couple of the things that seem kind of weird now, like random travelers just stopping by places and getting served prime pieces of meat, but another thing I found a bit strange was the amount of crying people did. The stereotype today is that men especially don't cry, but for everyone it's a sign of weakness to do it for too long or when you're trying to make a point. Telemachus crying during his speech seems to be greeted with a bit of awkwardness -- Homer says people are afraid to respond because he's crying, but one of the suitors still shuts him down, so if it was any sort of strategy it didn't really work. If Telemachus isn't strong enough to keep his emotions in check long enough to tell the suitors off, is he really a man yet?

Telemachus's speech is maybe the worst offender but Odysseus also does a lot of random crying -- for example, in Book 5, we find him on Calypso's island "weeping there as always, wrenching his heart with sobs and groans and anguish." Hasn't he been there for years? Yeah, it's a bad situation but did he really just spend his time sitting around and crying? I'm not sure if people actually cried a lot more then, Homer just wanted to make things dramatic, or Odysseus and his son are particularly emotional, but as Menelaus quotes Proteus when he's telling his storys: "How long must you weep? Withering tears, what good can come of tears?"