When [Penelope] awakens after the slaughter and hears the news that Eurycleia brings her, she cannot at first believe that it is truly Odysseus who accomplished it (her skepticism mirrors the earlier suspiciousness of her husband; both Odysseus and Penelope need to learn that there is a time for trust and acceptance to supersede disbelief). Instead, Penelope supposes it must be a god who has come down from Olympus to punish the suitors for their villainy.
The scene which follows shows Penelope, in the midst of her confusion and doubt, formulating a plan to test the identity of the stranger. Once before, in Book 19, she had attempted to do so ('Now, stranger, I have it in my mind to test you'), but there Odysseus had sidestepped. Now we see the tables turned, the biter bit, in the famous counter-test of the bed. Here Odysseus' celebrated caution and control vanish, and he bursts with indignation. This scene not only trumps Odysseus' previous testing and Penelope's own failure in book 19; Penelope here also goes on better than Athene in Book 13, for even Athene, though she deceived Odysseus and he failed to recognize her, could not make him give himself away: Impasse. Penelope is the only person who could outwit Odysseus in such a test, and this shows, like many other details and parallelisms between them, how well matched husband and wife truly are.
Further, it is not just the test itself, Odysseus knowledge of their secret, which makes Penelope believe in him, but his moment of angry passion, of uncontrolled emotion. As commentators have pointed out, a god would have known the truth [...] The automatic, unthinking surge of anger at the thought of his bed, his wonderful creation, being violated is wholly human.
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