Penelope and all that weaving

deception and controlling the narrative FOR THREE YEARS

Last week, I had the privilege of speaking to a group of 9th graders at Founder’s Classical Academy, a charter school in Lewisville. Their teacher, Catherine Rogers, is a family friend and an amazing teacher. The students have been reading Robert Faegel’s translation of the Odyssey, by Homer. Their discussion had come the part where Penelope deceived the suitors by undoing the weaving that they observed her doing each the day.

Catherine had asked me to show them how weaving works. I took a small tapestry loom that I frequently set up as a warp-weighted loom. Presently, the warp is wound around lower beam for ease of transport. Warp-weighted looms are not very portable as I have learned first-hand.

In the 19th chapter of the Odyssey, Penelope is trapped in her own home by dozens of young suitors who seem to have nothing else to do but “woo” her, the queen of Ithaca. She is obliged, by the laws of zenia, (hospitality) to feed and entertain these louts. They have been hanging around, literally eating her out of house and home.

Just like almost every other Ancient Greek female, her role (besides running the household and overseeing dinners and festivals) is to make fabric, lots and lots of fabric. She directed the slaves who make the useful stuff, and her handmaids who make the luxury goods especially the embroidered robes that are the official trade/gift items of Ancient Greece. Homer frequently describes women in relationship to their daily labors: spinning, weaving, procuring dry goods, collecting dyestuff etc.

Penelope and her family had been waiting 20 years for Odysseus to return home. Her mother-in-law was dead and her father-in-law, Laertes, was very old. She announced that she couldn’t possibly marry until she had woven a proper shroud for Laertes. So, for three years, she worked at her loom making what Homer described as a great web.

This is the only Homeric account of weaving that does not include woven figures. In the Iliad, Helen and the Trojan women spend their days recording the battles they witness: Figures, patterns, and symbols in richly woven fabric. Penelope’s fabric is described as magical, mysterious, transparent, and finely woven. But, it is clear that she is weaving plain cloth.

She worked on this wide, soft cloth for three years, publicly, in the communal part of the house. Every night, when the household (and all those pesky guests) were asleep, she unwove what she had done. Thus, stalling for time.

Her handmaidens betrayed her to the suitors who threatened her with violence. Then they supervised the completion of the shroud. Just as she finished, Odysseus turns up.

Soon after, when the the entire cadre of suitors arrive in Hades, they don’t complaining about Odysseus and his mighty sword but rather about Penelope’s web and her deception.

Check out this beautiful rendering, in thread, of Penelope unraveling her work from the 19th century by Dora Wheeler.

The time spent with those lovely ninth graders was wonderful. They knew their Homer and were eager to understand weaving. I gave each one a small cardboard loom to weave a friendship bracelet. One girl announced that she was starting a petition, “I think we should replace Latin with a Weaving Class!”

In the end, no one volunteered to undo the work, even though they had only been weaving for 30 minutes! Which made us admire Penelope’s fortitude all the more.