I seriously need people to understand that Penelope didn't wait for Odysseus for twenty years because social expectations dictated it, or because she was expected to be a faithful wife even untill she died.
Actually it was exactly the opposite: her father wanted her to remarry, some of the women wanted her to remarry, her son made her understand that if she took another husband and left home he wouldn't stop her. And at a certain point she recounts that before leaving for war Odysseus had told her that if he were to die, she could remarry whoever she liked (making sure first that Telemachus would take the throne without problems).
I need people to understand that Penelope's choice was entirely personal. She didn't remarry because her love for Odysseus had never abandoned her, because she knew that with no one else could she find that complete identity of thought and mind, that homophrosyne that she had with him.
It was not the choice of a woman who was modest and trapped by the expectations of her time. It was the choice of a woman who was freer and more independent than others, who preferred to remain without the protection of a man rather than resign herself to not having HER man.
