Homer's storytelling was geared towards a patriarchal society, whereby men are the decision-makers and hold positions of power and prestige, and have the power to define reality and common situations. It is a society that tends to hold contempt for women and where women were expected to possess certain traits and perform certain tasks that men demanded of them.
While Homer endorsed the dominating belief of his time by treating his female characters with partiality compared to their male counterparts, in the Odyssey, he identifies them additionally as temptresses.Similar in nature to a rose, with its incredible beauty and fragrance the rose is able to lure in unsuspecting victims, but the rose has thorns which show that it too can become a dangerous encounter. In turn a temptress, because of her beauty and manipulating ways, acts as a distraction in the protagonist's life, she is the reason for his downfall because she tempts the Hero to turn away from his goals, hopes, and dreams and makes him weak. The theme of temptation in the form of women appears throughout the poem.
After much agony at sea, Odysseus finds himself on the doorsteps of Circe. Circe is a temptress who proves that conquering sometimes just involves a show of force. To us she looks like a beautiful witch, but it is important to remember that she is not. She is, according to Homer, a goddess.
In the Odyssey (book X) the encounter between her and Odysseus's men is described: "She gave them all comfortable seats... but she put dangerous drugs in the mess, to make them wholly forget their native land.When once they had swallowed it, she gave them a tap of her wand at once and herded them into pens; for they now had pig heads and grunts and bristles, pigs all over except that their minds were the same as before.
" When her tricks failed to work on Odysseus, she lured him into her chamber, having man give into the temptation of woman. Her continued use of the feminine charm keeps Odysseus and his men on her island for one year, feasting and drinking wine. As the men set forth to make their trip back to Ithaca, faith prepares them for greater struggles.They are met by yet another female adversary, this time in the form of the Sirens.
Their voices were so beautiful, and hypnotizing that when they sang, "if any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again" (book XII). Despite being forewarned of the dangers, Odysseus gave into his poorer judgment and barely escaped the Sirens by tying himself securely to the mast so he couldn't move, and by blocking his men's ears with wax so they couldn't hear the Siren's beautiful but deadly voices.Odysseus eventually ended up on the island of Ogygia, home of Calypso. The name Calypso means 'the hider" (The Greek Goddesses) and she vividly represents the forces that cause men to be diverted from their goal. Calypso's force comes in the form of seduction, not brute strength. Calypso serves to define feminine as a sex-object mainly in terms of manly desires.
The goddess's sex appeal kept Odysseus imprisoned for seven years. With the loss of his men Odysseus was much more vulnerable to the temptations of immortality and that of a goddesses' beauty.While the Odyssey is centered on Odysseus's many encounters with temptresses, each prolonging his journey, Odysseus is not the only male to suffer at the hands of females. His wife, Penelope, uses her womanly charm to discourage the suitors that have overwhelmed her home. Penelope embodies the submissive, weak woman in that she does little more than cry for her husband's return. Being female, however, she does not refrain entirely from using her cunning to her advantage.
She manages to successfully prolong a relationship with any of the suitors by telling them she will choose amongst them once she finishes her weaving.Since she undoes all of her work every night, she is able to keep the suitors at bay for some time. Still, they eventually realize the trick and force her to finish her work. Despite using their feminine powers to seduce men, these women/temptresses are ultimately dependent on the actions of men.
The goddess Calypso had managed to keep Odysseus on her island for seven years, but the arrival of Hermes brought an end to Calypso's possession. Despite her arguing the hypocrisy of the gods, Calypso eventually submitted to the will of Zeus.Hermes also interrupts Circes plans by giving Odysseus a drug making him immune to her poison. When her potion fails on Odysseus, she immediately entreats him, thereby acknowledging his power over her. This again shows that the feminine wiles will only carry women so far before they must submit to men. The Sirens are the ideal depiction of feeble female using her charm to control men.
Despite having a melodious voice that is capable of driving man insane, the physical illustration of these women is symbolic of their lower status.The Sirens can project their song out onto the ocean, but they themselves cannot move because they remain fixed to the rocks. Thinking back to the metaphor used in the introductory paragraph, as dangerous as a rose is to handle, it too eventually gets stripped of its thorns. Through his temptresses, Homer demonstrates that the women of Grecian society would use their feminine charm to often improve their situation and sometimes would come to exert power over men, but they were never completely independent.
