Odysseus and Penelope’s Comedy of Remarriage (“The Odyssey,” Postscript to Part 3)

Wes & Erin conclude their discussion of “The Odyssey,” with a focus on Odysseus and Penelope getting reacquainted with each other in Books 19 and 23. We discuss Penelope asking Odysseus-in-disguise whether she should marry a suitor, but tells him the dream of 20 geese, foretelling their ruin; the test involving the bed post tree trunk; and how we might think of the ending to this epic as a comedy of remarriage. Thanks to our sponsors for this episode St. John’s College, and Füm. Learn more about undergraduate–and graduate–Great Books programs at St. John’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland at sjc.edu/subtext. Head to TryFum.com and use code SUBTEXT to save 10 percent off when you get the Journey pack today. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:00 Wes: Okay. Welcome to Postscript. We just got almost done talking about the Odyssey. We are just going to finish up by talking about Odysseus reuniting with Penelope and in particular, books 19 and 23, where they have their personal interactions with each other. So it's in book 19 that he first sits down with Penelope. I think this is page 428 in Emily Wilson's translation. So let me just go there. I think Penelope asks him about who he is, and he says, don't ask me about my family or native land. You have the right to question me, but do not ask about my family or native land. The memory will fill my heart with pain. I am a man of sorrow. I think that's where the I am a man of constant sorrow idea comes from. And then it's in what movie? 0:57 Erin: Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? 0:58 Wes: Yeah, it's just, I guess, retelling in a way. And then the other aspect of this, which I thought was interesting, well, we get more testing because Odysseus, as beggar tells of seeing real Odysseus. There's a great line where the poet says his lies were like the truth. And as she listened, she began to weep. But she then tests him by asking what Odysseus looked like. And he describes that. And she knew the signs, so she knows his story is authentic. Odysseus says he's heard that Odysseus is coming home, but he wanted. This is the part where he says he had to travel to get more wealth, which is a funny way of bragging. And then Penelope says, no, I don't think he's coming back. And then finally Penelope says, should I marry a suitor? And then comes up with this idea of, let's look at that. This is 4:41. This is an odd. And I'll say why in a moment. So she starts out this speech by saying, stranger, I have one small question I want to ask you. I lie crying in bed and overwhelmed by pain, worries and sorrows crowd into my heart. And then a little farther, farther down, just so, my mind pulls two directions. Should I stay here beside my son and keep things all the same, my property, my slave girls and my great house to show respect towards my husband's bed and what the people say, or should I marry one of them, whichever is best of all the suitors and can bring most presents and so on. And then she tells a dream about 20 geese and them getting killed by an eagle, which is obviously a vision of Odysseus killing the suitors. And Odysseus just says, well your dream means that, you know, it portends ruin for all the suitors. So he doesn't directly answer. And then Penelope says, well some dreams are tricks and some are not. But Odysseus never correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see that he ever really answers the question that Penelope asks about should I marry a suitor? I mean, he indirectly answers it by saying they're all going to get killed. But the other aspect of that is he's not upset that she's considering marrying a suitor, which is really interesting in light of the fact that she's portrayed as constant and loyal. And she even says she's going to arrange a contest with the suitors. Whoever can shoot the arrow through the axes, right, will win her hand. And Odysseus is like that's a great idea because Odysseus will arrive before that's finished to kill them all. And really he's thinking in his mind, of course this is a good setup for the impending slaughter. But he's not upset by the fact that it's seems to suggest that a suitor is still is a real option for her. Oh, Odysseus doesn't have to interpret the dream for her. The eagle comes back and interprets the dream from within the dream. The interpretation is coming from inside the dream. The geese of the suitors. I was once an eagle, but now I am your husband. Okay. 4:04 Erin: It's so difficult to say what Odysseus's psychology is and that's part of, maybe part of the appeal. But I think he is maybe giving her space for her ambivalence, if you will. He's wisely not saying anything because I think that this demonstrates a deep ambivalence that Penelope has about Odysseus homecoming which you know, as we've already said, Odysseus himself has about his own homecoming. And just as Odysseus tests her, she tests him. And so if anything I see this as a parallel between the two of them, but one in which, you know, interestingly, Odysseus own future kind of hangs, hangs in the balance or her desire for him hangs in the balance. But I like the fact that he doesn't say anything because of course she's right, I think to be she feels however she feels about it. But to the extent that we could say that a feeling is correct, I think she's correct to feel ambivalent about giving up the attentions. However, you know, at whatever cost they've come of a bunch of men for one man who has abandoned her and has been unfaithful all over the known 5:13 Wes: world with mortals and immortals. Maybe with. Yeah, I'm sure with both. But yeah. 5:19 Erin: And I also, you know, I'm also interested and I honestly don't know what to make of this, but I'm interested in this idea of the two types of dreams as well. I'm wondering if she is saying that this one comes out of the trickery kind of dream. 5:32 Wes: Yeah, maybe those three dance. 5:34 Erin: Yeah. She says stranger dreams are confusing and not all come true. There are two gates of dreams. One pair is made of horn and one of ivory. The dreams from ivory are full of trickery. Their stories turn out false. The ones that come through polished horn come true. But my strange dream did not come out that way. I think I wish it had, as does my son. 5:56 Wes: And then the axe contest. So she's basically saying, yeah, no, Odysseus isn't coming back. I'm going to do the. To contest to find a suitor. 6:04 Erin: But she's also, perhaps if she suspects that this guy is Odysseus, which I'm also of two minds of. She's giving herself an out for having the impure thought of, you know, desiring the suitors not to be killed. Right. Wanting them to stay, not wanting her husband to return. She's giving herself an out by saying that this is maybe the trickery dream, the dream that has no, no meaning behind it. Right. She's saying, well, it's just a dream. Right. It doesn't mean anything. And so it undercuts the whole reason for the conversation in the first place, which is to have Odysseus interpret it because that implies that there is some meaning to be interpreted. It's confusing because, as you say, it also interprets itself. I'm most interested, I think, in the fact that she is providing an out for her own ambivalence. And yeah, I guess that's it. But a secondary element is the distinction between the horn and the ivory, which I find really interesting. One comes out of the head. They're made of the same type of material, I believe. Right. Because ivory would be like a tusk or teeth and the horn would be made, I think, of fundamentally the same type of structure as listeners can correct me if I'm wrong, as a tusk, they can't be too different. They're both probably made of. 7:23 Wes: Well, they're at least similar. I mean, ivory, I think of elephant tusks and then horn, maybe on A ram or something. 7:31 Erin: Right. But I'm wondering if they're both made of the same type of collagen type. 7:37 Wes: Yeah, yeah. 7:38 Erin: Structure. Right. 7:39 Wes: I think they're. I mean, is it ultimately skin cells? The type of. The same, sort of. 7:44 Erin: But anyway, but I think it's, you know, they're similar to each other, but they come out of different parts of the head. Right. 7:52 Wes: Okay. 7:53 Erin: One, the horn, it's almost like Athena springing from the head of Zeus. Right. So the horn that comes out of the head, that one comes true. The one that comes through the mouth is one of trickery. I don't know. I think there's an interesting distinction being made here. But I don't want to put too fine a point on it. No pun intended, anyway. 8:17 Wes: But yeah, it's interesting that she would simply assume the dream is one of the false ones when it's so. So it's such a clean, obvious dream. So, you know, she doesn't psychologize her skepticism about the dream. Right. She gives a kind of mythology around it. But you know what you. Or I might say, well, that's just wishful thinking. But for her it came through the wrong gate. And then she says, she says, and then she has to go to the conclusion of the conversation is she's going to go to sleep. And she says this thing that I really like. Humans cannot stay awake forever. If you would sit and entertain me guest, I would never wish to go to sleep. But humans cannot stay awake forever. And then talks about her bed being stained with tears. And then the line about the use of the word Evilion for Troy. But no, I think all of it is interesting in light of your observation of the dreamlike quality of the repetition that Odysseus has been engaged in. Right. And the associations of dreams with wishes, which in a way is one might use to explain her skepticism about the geese dream. So does the dream merely express a wish or a repetition? Or does it tell us something about, you know, if not the future, about ourselves, at least if we can properly interpret it. Right. Which is something that the ancient Greeks do. They interpret dreams and they interpret a few times. In this poem, an eagle actually does swoop. What is it? A dove comes by with a dove in its claws. And that's supposed to be an omen each time Odysseus killing the suitors. 10:05 Erin: I like too what you're saying with calling attention to the birds reminds me we have in Odysseus dream slash story of the man from Crete. You know, it's a different island than Ithaca, but it's a similar kind of similar setup. Right. And, you know, are you an eagle or a goose? Are you from Ithaca or from Crete? Are you. You know, something I think we've already alluded to also is the fact that the suitors aren't necessarily doing anything that Odysseus himself wouldn't do in the same situation. Right. It's not like Odysseus has some kind of moral high ground. So there's a. There's an interesting kind of. Maybe it's this question that we talked about in the main episode of, like, can you just reinsert someone for Odysseus? Maybe that's at the heart of Penelope's question. If I'm married to an eagle, could I just as easily be married to a goose? You know, can Odysseus be replaced? Can Odysseus replace his own backstory as a man from Crete rather than a man from Ithaca? You know, so there's a question of, like, whether or not substitution suffices. That's at the heart maybe of both of these repetitions and iterations or dreamlike 11:14 Wes: variations, which is interesting in light of the fact that a lot of these tests involve these sort of key and lock type situations in which. Or maybe that's not the right metaphor. Exactly. But one is supposed to exhibit certain signs that only the other person could know. 11:32 Erin: Yes. 11:32 Wes: It happens again in the. The bed scene where Penelope will tell a little story about. Well, she doesn't tell the story. She will say, hey, move the bed or something like that for Eurycleia to make a bed for him and pull out the bedstead. And then Odysseus gets furious. He doesn't figure out that he's being tested and says, woman, your words have cut my heart. Who moved my bed? And tells the whole story of creating the bed around the trunk as a bedpost, in fact, building the whole house around that. Right. And the way it's put is that Penelope recognizes the tokens that he's provided 12:15 Erin: because this is the particularity to circumvent the. 12:20 Wes: The unsubstitutability. Yeah. And the lack of substitutability involves, of course, all of the prior experience that one has had with the person and the ways in which each of you, each person in the couple, has affected each other. They've been a formative force in each other's lives. And that fades in a way because they've been away from each other for so long. In a way, Penelope's weaving, which looks a little Bit like a repetition compulsion as well. Way of avoiding being subject to new formative forces which might turn her into a different person and so really might sever her from her husband in a way that physical distance just doesn't do by itself. 13:13 Erin: This very unsubstitutability, as you're saying, this is the cornerstone of the, you know, the comedies of remarriage that we've talked about in other episodes. This is the real root of my interest in. In those relationships is that they seem to, you know, like. Cavell makes this point in his book about these films. And this is something, too, that we've addressed in, like, at least in the Awful Truth episode, I think, his Girl Friday as well. He makes this point that the couple has to know each other, like, almost from childhood or nearly from childhood, right? They have to be this. Like each other's origin story that they make each other like Adam and Eve, right? Or Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado where Beatrice says of Benedict, I know him of old, right? This idea that you have a history that predates the story in which the characters are occupying so that they go way, way back, back before we knew them. This, I think, contributes to the romance of the whole thing. Not that one needs to know one's partner from childhood or something like that, but it builds the two characters into each other in this way that you're talking about from a storytelling perspective. It makes them inextricably intertwined, like the bed and the house, because they try to substitute someone else in the place of the spouse, right? This is the part of the fun of the comedy of remarriage. But it doesn't fit. It's not this lock and key. It's about being in love just with this one particular person. And that even when you stray or you do all this other stuff, there is still nothing like that person. And that particularity and even the peculiarity of being so deeply attached to one other person in particular, I think is like, a contributing factor to what I see as like, the deep romance with a capital R at the end of this poem that's embedded in Odysseus and Penelope's story and which I think makes them like the first comedy of remarriage. You know, they have to, like, re. Recommit themselves to each other. It's exactly like the structure of the Shakespeare comedies and of the 30s and 40s films. 15:19 Wes: Yeah, that's great. What better way to lock someone in than to build the bed and the house around the bedpost, right? And I mean, a bedpost that is a tree trunk and can't even be taken out of the ground. So, yeah, that's commitment. That is commitment. You can't even move the bed. So, yeah, that's. You know, as you pointed out, that's a really great metaphor for how intertwined they are with each other and how they can't escape each other, which is not true of all couples, of course. And we were wondering, I think in one of our discussions, we were wondering why Penelope is holding on. I think it's because Odysseus did such a good job with the bedpost. No, I'm just kidding. But I like your comedy of remarriage idea. They're too implicated in each other's makeup at this point. 16:15 Erin: There's even the suggestion. I believe I mentioned this in the previous episode, but I'll just say it again, that Penelope, were she to remarry, were she to marry one of these suitors, there's the ritual that she has to go back to her father's house. Right. So it's almost like she has to rewind the tape. You know, she has to go back to childhood and be like a child in her father's house again in order to marry one of these guys, which represents. She has to, you know, the blackboard of her identity has to be erased and then rewritten with this new. I mean, this is just a ritual that I suppose, that all Greek women at this time would have to go through. But insofar as it. As it accords with this comedy of remarriage idea, you know, she has to, like, revert to a childlike state for a new man to intervene adequately in her life. But she won't. She can't. It's impossible. She's been too. Her blackboard, her bed is too entangled, is too written on. And that's what I see as. So, yeah. So beautiful about this and all the comedies of remarriage, I think, because we're living in this, like, Tinder age where if you don't, like whoever you're with, you could just type in somebody better on your phone and just replace them, you know, and so. And this. This idea that. No, no, no, it has to be this particular person. You're so inextricably bound up with each other that you can't go with anyone else. And even when you're gone for 20 years, you have to go back to this person no matter what. 17:42 Wes: Yeah, that's where home is. Being with this person is like being at home. It's not entirely unrelated to being part of a certain culture, being part of a larger network of a family, a tribe, a people, that type of thing. It's funny because you're reminding me of the fact that Penelope talks about if she were to remarry, having being taken away from home, she uses the same phrase. And these are both in conversations with Odysseus. One when she knows him as the beggar in book 19 and then one when she knows him as. No. Well, let's look at the first one. So this is on page 443. She says, I will be parted from here, this lovely house, my marriage home, so full of wealth and life, which I suppose I will remember even in my dreams. I thought it was really interesting that she used this phrase, remember even in my dreams, twice. So the other time is at 4:62. And okay, this is when she's addressing the suitors and says, I will marry him and leave this beautiful rich house so full of life, my lovely bridal home. I think I will remember it forever even in my dreams, which I kind of made note of that also in relation to the fact that Penelope gives an account of a dream that she's had. So she makes several references to dreams. I don't know that any character does that. Right. You can. If you know of one, let me know. But as far as I remember, she's the only one who relates a dream or talks so much about dreams. The aspect of her attachment to Odysseus is having something to do with being so attached to home and to the idea of it being full of wealth and life. Wealth is something, of course, that gets mentioned a lot. I mean, really like material wealth and resources and cattle and all that stuff. Polished wood. That's part of it, yeah. 19:42 Erin: And the dream maybe is, you know, this internal. Referencing the dream in the text, as you're saying, almost implies like an interiority that no other character has. There's a depth there that it's like her inner room, which is not dissimilar to the bedroom. You know, she keeps retreating up there all the time and she's always crying on her bed and stuff like that. But then having these dreams, having this activity going on inside of her at this level, if she is in fact the only one to have and relate these dreams, gives her that kind of feeling. 20:16 Wes: I'm looking at this now. I think dreams are mentioned almost exclusively in reference to Penelope. There's another mention where it says, intelligent Penelope, still sleeping sweetly inside the gates of dreams. This is on page 178. So much earlier than when she mentions the gates. There's almost no other. There's one other mention of dreams in the whole book. I think that's not Penelope related. Yeah. And that's when he's in Hades. So the shadows are like dreams. 20:43 Erin: The depth there inside Penelope's psyche is similar to the, you know, the deep part of the house, the root of the house, where the bedroom is. 20:53 Wes: If you lose home, it visits you in your dreams. Which in a way, as you pointed out, is the dreamlike quality of Odysseus Adventures. And in a way, the fantastical quality of it. Right. Is a product of what it is to be homeless. We think about it non literally. So there's a dreamlike quality to homelessness. It's like being in a shadow world. And of course, everyone and all the poor spirits in Hades, I guess the implication is they're homeless as well. But anyway, do we have anything else? Any final thoughts? 21:29 Erin: I don't think so. That was a great discussion. Great ending. 21:33 Wes: Yeah. All right. Thank you. 21:36 Erin: Thank you.