Women play a major role in the Odyssey. However,
although their influence is often beneficial, as when Nausicaa clothes
Odysseus, Circe gives Odysseus valuable information, and Helen aids Telemachus’
quest for his father, it is also often unfavorable. Women in the
Odyssey are dangerous as they are tempting to men, clever, and have strange,
mysterious powers than no man can understand. It is because of the
lush Calypso, the pretty Nausicaa, the wily Penelope, the murderous Clytemnestra,
the enigmatic Helen, and the sorcerous Circe that men’s lives and destinies
are again and again endangered, demonstrating the Greek viewpoint that
women are as likely to be dangerous, insidious Pandoras who must be carefully
guarded as faithful mothers and wives.
One of the most dangerous things about women appears
to be their beauty and desirability. Odysseus says of Calypso that
“She (Penelope) falls far short of you,/your beauty, stature” (p. 159).
It is, perhaps, this beauty that makes it so difficult for Odysseus to
leave the nymph’s island, endangering his destiny to return to his home.
Similarly, the virgin daughter of King Alcinous, Nausicaa, is imperiling.
She wishes to have Odysseus as her husband, and her innocent beauty and
utopian kingdom are tempting prizes for Odysseus to leave behind.
More dangerous, however, are the clever wits of women. Although Penelope aids her husband, she helps to destroy the lives of her hundred suitors. Penelope’s wiles do allow her to evade the suitor’s desire for matrimony, but they also falsely encourage the suitors, which creates disaster when Odysseus returns and butchers all of them. Similarly, Clytemnestra’s intelligence allows her to plot to kill her husband, Agamemnon. Agamemnon tells the story in the underworld of how he was, “invited…to his palace, sat me down to feast/then cut me down as a man cuts down some ox at a trough!” (p. 262) Had Clytemenstra not been so clever, she might not have had the intelligence to plan Agamemnon’s death with her lover, Aegisthus.
But dangerous as the mind of an unfaithful woman like Clytemnestra is, more dangerous still is that which cannot be seen. Both Helen and Circe are dangerous for their mysterious powers of beauty, desirability, and female magic, all of which seem unfathomable to many men. Helen killed thousands of men when she abandoned her husband as she accidentally began “headlong battles” for the sake of her otherworldly charm (p. 129). Her supernatural powers also prove to be useful when she tells Telemachus that Odysseus has returned home, but Odysseus never would have left home had Helen not possessed the inhuman beauty that drove men to siege Troy over. Circe’s beauty is also superhuman and her magic proves to be as deadly as Helen’s. Odysseus might have changed, like his men, “all of them bristling into swine”, by the touch of Circe’s wand had not Hermes decided to save him by giving him a magical herb called moly (p. 237). Although Odysseus did manage to save his sailors, countless other men had already died and may die in the future because of Circe’s charms.
The dangers of these women in the Odyssey both add tension to the story and demonstrate the mysterious power that various men felt women had by showing women entrancing the various heroes in the story with new dangers and wonders. These wonders can be lethal, as in the case of Clytemnestra, Helen, Penelope, and Circe, or they can be beautiful and subtle, as with Nausicaa and Calypso, but either way, they endanger either the hero or his quest. Although the female characters in the Odyssey are often helpful, they are also dangerous and must be watched warily by the male heroes.