Hi hello, I have seen the “Odysseus can pose a threat to Penelope if he sees her being unfaithful” debate everywhere. But can you help me to elaborate how?
Hi, sure.
There are people who have expressed it way better than I ever could, but if I can be of any help I'm glad to. This is going to be quite long and hopefully not too messy.
Sources for the things I will say: Penelope's Renown: Meaning and Indeterminacy in the Odyssey and Penelope: from character to poetics.
The first thing to say is if you're asking me whether Odysseus poses a physical threat to Penelope (e.g. whether he wants to kill/be violent with her if she betrays him), then in my opinion there is no basis in the text to support this. This threat is never made explicit by him. Odysseus is repeatedly put in a position to think about a possible betrayal (especially when he talks to Agamemnon, but also for example when he hears the love story between Ares and Aphrodite while he is at the court of the Phaeacians) and he never expresses violent thoughts or intentions towards a hypothetical adulterous Penelope. And this is not an attempt to argue that "he's not like other boys" as I'm sometimes forced to read on tumblr, but it is simply based on the text we have. Moreover, Helen's fate seems to indicate to me that in the Homeric world forgiveness towards adulterous wives is at least conceived.
BUT just because there is no explicit threat of physical violence doesn't mean there isn't an underlying potential threat that all the characters perceive.
On several occasions the Odyssey tells the story of Agamemnon and how he was killed by his wife's lover with her complicity. This story is a great alarm bell for the characters, it is a possible plot twist that everyone must take into account. The comparison is immediate:
Agamemnon -> Odysseus
Clytemnestra -> Penelope
Orestes -> Telemachus
Obviously the fact that the stories can be compared does not mean that they can overlap. For example, Telemachus does not feel up to it nor does he seem so willing to take on the role of Orestes as avenger of his father's honor. If he did, he would not have the same reasons as Orestes to direct his revenge towards his mother. But be careful about this last point, because it is clear that Telemachus has some resentment towards his mother and that he perceives her as a threat. This is what Antinous tells him when they are in assembly:
"For I assure you that so long as she maintains this attitude that the gods have guided her to adopt, the Suitors will continue to eat you out of house and home. She may be winning a great name for herself, but at what expense to you!" (Odyssey book 2, Rieu)
So one consideration we can make is that the threat is not one-way. Penelope is herself a threat to Odysseus and Telemachus, and they are a threat to her.
Basically the characters' ignorance about Odysseus' fate (will he return or not?) in itself poses a threat.
In the absence of certainty, there is no right course of action for either Telemachus or Penelope. For Telemachus because:
1) If he faced the suitors alone it would be a suicide mission.
2) He perceives the threat that his mother represents as long as she stays in the house, but can he throw her out if his father is about to come home? No. (Also it seems to me that he is unhappy with the idea of throwing her out anyway).
For Penelope because:
1) by postponing the wedding she is endangering her son's life.
2) if Odysseus is alive she is endangering him and she is also endangering herself by remarrying.
The threat exists because none of the three has all the information, none of the three already knows how the others will act. For Penelope the decision to remarry is the best if Odysseus is dead, but it is objectively wrong if he is alive.
So this is the potential threat, but we can't ignore the fact that in the end things go very differently for the ithacan family than for the house of Atreus. The Odyssey proposes the theme of the House of Atreus several times, only to then distance itself from it and propose an alternative. And since the question was specifically about how Odysseus reacts to Penelope's possible infidelity, I think it's right to focus on his actual behaviors as well, not just potential ones.
An important thing to keep in mind is: the rapresentation of Penelope as the perfect little wife who would never cheat on her husband is very imprecise. Penelope is a person whose thoughts are very difficult to know, and it is very difficult to predict her moves. There is not a single character that can explain with definitive and authoritative voice why she is doing what she is doing. This is continually suggested to us in the text. I will try to give an example that I think is very eloquent. Let's take the scene in which she appears for the first time before Odysseus (still in disguise): she tells the suitors that the time has come for her to get married and narrates that Odysseus had told her that she could/should remarry as soon as Telemachus got old enough. So she convinces the suitors to give her the classic wedding gifts. And then
The noble, patient Odysseus was delighted at her words, because she was extorting gifts from her suitors and bewitching them by her persuasive words, while all the time her heart was set on something quite different (Odyssey book 18, Rieu)
So he "knows" that she is making fun of them. But let's think about this for a moment. There are two possibilities: 1) Penelope did not lie about the story 2) Penelope did lie about the story.
If Penelope told the truth then it is not clear why Odysseus should rejoice. How can he know that her heart is set on something different? Is he rejoicing just because she is getting gifts? Or is it because of a sort of pride in the fact that she is so desired by other men (her value as a woman rises)? This second possibility does not seem to be suggested by the text in Odysseus' reaction, but I point out that this interpretation seems to be very close to Athena's plan when she arouses in Penelope the desire to be seen by the suitors. Athena seems to want Penelope to prove herself capable of bringing value to the home and value in the Homeric poems is measured in physical objects.
Or Penelope lied. If Penelope lied why should Odysseus rejoice? Penelope's lie could just be a little excuse to justify the long wait that now is finally over. It could be, in Odysseus' eyes, overwhelming evidence that she actually wants to remarry. Otherwise she would have invented something else.
Here my imaginary interlocutor brings up the concept of homophrosyne. Those two have the same mind and therefore must understand everything about each other, right? Personally, it seems to me that this implies taking the concept a bit too far, and above all it is not really supported by what happens in the text (why should Odysseus fall into the final trap of the bed if Penelope's mind has no secrets for him anyway?). Homophrosyne means that they have the same mind, yes, but in the sense that they are both difficult to read, very distrustful, cautious, liars and both always have more than one purpose.
The point is that Odysseus (and we even less than him in this case) cannot know what Penelope's true intentions are. He can know if she is lying and he can imagine what her feelings are (also because he has been reassured by Athena about them), but he cannot really know them. How can you easily know the heart of a person who always lies?
And be careful because the bow contest is the same thing, if not "worse": how does Odysseus know that she is not calling the contest because she has actually realized that it is better to remarry? After all, that is what her words suggest. Odysseus tells her that having the bow contest is a great idea (and in fact it is because he will have access to a weapon). Can he suspect that she has recognized him and is offering him help? In my opinion, yes, but it would still be a suspicion.
I've finished setting the scene, now I'm finally getting to the point:
What I find important to answer your question is not so much racking our brains to figure out how much Odysseus knew (or how much Penelope knew). I think it's important to understand how Odysseus behaves in his position of ignorance about Penelope's intentions. In my opinion, when Odysseus sees Penelope and then tests her, he is not particularly alarmed by the idea that Penelope might decide that she can no longer postpone marriage. When they talk to each other he tests her heart more than her intentions. He knows she is in a difficult situation and is very happy with how she has handled it up to that point. He is also reassured by the way she remembers him, by the strength with which she desires him. He knows she is doubting but he experiences her doubts as a challenge, because he wants to win her back, to prove to her that her feelings are not misplaced, that he is still worthy of her love as he was twenty years before. So let it be clear that Odysseus wants to test her and be tested by her.
As I already said Odysseus can't be sure of her true intentions and he knows that. That's why he is still in disguise. But the fact that they both lie to each other and don't trust each other right away is what will bring them closer again in the end. It's what they share.
So to answer your question: Odysseus and Penelope pose a serious threat to each other: they don't know how the other will act and must behave cautiously because of this. And it is precisely this that makes it even more incredible that in the end, without their knowing it, their minds are so in sync.
