The Odyssey and the murdered "girls" and what's missing

You knew we’d have to do a Lectures and Libations on The Odyssey, right? “Monstrous Women, Heroic Men”— August 22 in Pasadena, CA

Study Hall: August 16th (on zoom)!

(link to be sent August 15)

Catch up with last week:

In Book 22 we encounter one of the most controversial scenes in The Odyssey, a scene that is somewhat notoriously missing from Nolan’s film (notorious to me). The scene is the murdering of the enslaved women upon Odysseus' return to Ithaca. In the film, Melantho, Penelope's slave who betrays her, becomes a metaphor for all the 12 murdered enslaved women, and it's at Penelope's hand she's punished, not Odysseus’ or Telemachus’.

The erasure itself is interesting, because while Nolan states that he chose not to include the scene because it's misogynistic, the erasure of the women entirely has misogynistic consequences as well. Why was the responsibility for her death transferred onto Penelope? I suppose it does give her more power, more agency, at a betrayal a contemporary audience would understand? The violence of the scene comes at the end of probably the most violent book in the text, so it’s not the violence that’s of specific concern, but more so the added misogyny in the translations that we’ve been examining in particular.

Does it protect the heroic men?

In significant contrast, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad is a direct response to, and gives voice to, the twelve hanged enslaved women.

Is total erasure better?