Odysseus’ dead women: souls of silent loquacity

Abstract

In the complex structure of the Odyssey, women set decisive milestones along Odysseus’ path to Ithaca and become essential to configure a narrative the protagonist of which must gradually reenter to regain his identity. For this reason, the determinant spaces in this restitution are linked to female names.

This paper focuses on the Odyssey’s scenario that is most antithetical to the real world, the underworld, where the words of Tiresias prepare the hero to successfully complete his return, as well as the voice and silence of the dead women. The katabasis (book 11) is the episode of the poem that best indicates the condition of Odysseus as a hero out of limits. In the plural female universe of the Odyssey, the shades of heroines that Odysseus contemplates in Hades are perhaps not just an interpolation or a nod to a potential female audience. If we look at who the women mentioned are, what the poet reminds about them and how they are characterized, perhaps the selection of heroines –particularly those who are perverse and those who are only named– is not accidental: by contrast, their inclusion may distinguish Penelope from the rest.