I feel like people give Penelope a lot of undeserved shit for crying a lot in the Odyssey. Like, imagine you're her:
You marry a man who loves you so much that he builds your home by hand and carves your marital bed out of a living olive tree (still living because it's a symbol of your love, this man is sentimental af)
Also said home that he built is a palace because he's the king and now you're the queen. So that's a bonus.
You have your first child together. You and your child both survive, and your child is a son who can inherit the throne! Your husband loves your son, and still loves you!
Your husband is being drafted into a war. He feigns insanity to try to stay home with you and your son. His dickhead coworker comes over and your husband has no choice but to drop the act to save your son's life. Dickhead coworker drags your husband off to war.
Nine years pass. The war ends! The soldiers come home! ...Your husband is nowhere to be seen. His coworkers say that he survived the battle (with all 600 of his soldiers!), so they have no idea why he isn't home yet.
Time passes. Everyone thinks your husband is dead. Every single bachelor in your kingdom is abusing guest hospitality to feast at your home, wasting your money and resources, bullying your son, harassing your servants, and demanding that you pick one of them to remarry.
Trying to buy yourself time, you ask them to wait until you finish weaving a shroud for your husband's father. It would be a tragedy for such a great man to not have a shroud, after all. They agree. You buy yourself several years by weaving during the day and secretly unweaving it at night, until one of your maids snitches on you. The suitors force you to finish it. You do.
Trying to buy more time, you set a challenge: string my husband's bow (war bow, requires strength to string) (foreign bow, requires knowledge to string properly) and shoot through twelve axes (requires precision and skill). Whoever does it will get to marry you and become king.
The suitors can't do it, and now they're planning to kill your son (who left to search for his father) so you have no one left to protect you.
Despite being the queen, you're still a woman, and have limited rights. You cannot protect yourself. The title of queen only makes you more vulnerable, because it means more people are preying on you, trying to become king by marrying you. If your son dies, you will have no protection.
It's been twenty years since you last saw your beloved husband. You don't even know for sure whether he's dead or not, or if you'll ever know. A group of brash, disrespectful men are taking up space in your home every single day. There is a plot by these men to kill your son and you can't even warn him about it. These men demand that you marry one of them, and none of them love you; they want you as an object, and they want the benefits that come with marrying you.
Like, shit, I'd be sobbing my eyes out too. Crying doesn't make her weak or helpless. She is a strong woman who is in a horrible situation, doing her best to keep her head above water, and it's understandable that she's emotional and miserable.
She is cunning, and clever, and she is buying her husband time, hoping he's out there, somewhere, and that he'll come home. And when he finally shows up, she doesn't immediately jump into his arms — she tests him, making sure it's truly him, truly her husband, before she rejoices at their reunion. Regardless of her emotions in the moment, she holds them back and makes sure that the situation is truly as it seems, that it isn't some trick.
Penelope is not a "damsel in distress" just because she cries. I mean, for one, she's not a damsel; she's a mistress. But she's a mistress in distress the same way that Odysseus is a master is distress: they are surviving using their own cunning, but boy are they having a bad time, and boy do they miss their spouse.
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