Blog Response #3: Gender and Trickery

In the course of Homer’s epic, The Odyssey, women are depicted as creatures who constantly use deception to trick others. One of the most prominent instances of this trickery is committed by Agamémnon’s wife Klytaimnéstra. She has an affair with Aigísthos and then together they kill her husband. When Odysseus journeys to the Underworld Agamémnon claims that his wife’s treachery has, “defiled herself and all her sex, all women yet to come, even those few who may be virtuous.” His proclamation not only claims the ruin of her sex but also insinuates that there was already a predisposition within women not to be virtuous.

This treachery in women is not always presented as a terrible thing, however. Early in the epic Penélopê uses her cunning and intelligence to outsmart the suitors in Ithaka who ardently pursue her. She claims she will choose a new husband after she has woven a burial shroud for Odysseus but each night she unwinds it and further delays their advances.

The best positive example is found in Athena, who differs from the others because she is a goddess but is female, nonetheless. She uses several disguises to mask her true identity from the mortals whom she acts as a guardian over. Athena’s deception is helpful to the central characters of the epic, all of whom she assists at some point whether she is a Phaiákian girl with pigtails or Mentor conversing with Telémakhos and Nestor.

While this trickery does not occur exclusively in women, it is emphasized within them. Although it does not put females in a positive light it does give them the status that many other works of the time would not have afforded them, and this femme fatale motif would have been the most socially acceptable way to do in Homer’s time.