Penelope Pensive
by Esther Newman-Cohen
Title
Penelope Pensive
Artist
Esther Newman-Cohen
Medium
Drawing - Oil Pastels On Paper
Description
In the epic Greek poem, The Odyssey by Homer, Penelope faithfully awaits her husband Odysseus's return from the Trojan War. He returns disguised as an old beggar to find that Penelope has remained faithful. She has devised tricks to delay her suitors, one of which is to pretend to be weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus's elderly fatherLaertes and claiming that she will choose a suitor when she has finished. Every night for three years, she undoes part of the shroud, until Melantho, one of twelve unfaithful serving women, discovers her chicanery and reveals it to the suitors.
Because of her efforts to put off remarriage, Penelope is often seen as a symbol of connubial fidelity and we are reminded several times of her fidelity. But due to Athena's meddling, who wants her "to show herself to the wooers, that she might set their hearts a-flutter and win greater honor from her husband and her son than heretofore", Penelope does appear before the suitors (xviii.160�162).
She is ambivalent, variously asking Artemis to kill her and, apparently, considering marrying one of the suitors. When the disguised Odysseus returns, she announces in her long interview with the disguised hero that whoever can string Odysseus's rigid bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe heads may have her hand. There is debate as to whether she is aware that Odysseus is behind the disguise. Penelope and the suitors know that Odysseus (were he in fact present) would easily surpass all in any test of masculine skill. Since Odysseus seems to be the only person (perhaps excepting Telemachus) who can actually use the bow, it could merely have been another delaying tactic of Penelope's.
This is a signed original work drawn in oil pastel on paper.
Uploaded
August 27th, 2013
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