Select Instances of Penelope in Modern and Ancient Works

The most prominent use of the character Penelope in ancient works is Homer’s The Odyssey. Homer, who’s date of birth is unknown but guessed to be somewhere in either the 8th or 9th Century BC, wrote The Odyssey at an equally unknown date. There have been many translations of The Odyssey over the years; the translation referred to here is from 2002, and is by Rodney Merrill.
In this work, Penelope is the wife of Odysseus, the “wanderer.” Her first appearance in The Odyssey is in Book 1, line 222, where she is credited to have borne her son “to be of such fine mettle.” Penelope’s real treatment in the work, however, comes not as mother but as wife. Despite the fact Odysseus has been away from Penelope for years, first to fight the Trojan War, and then sailing around the Mediterranean Sea, lost but intent on returning home, Penelope remains faithful to her husband. At no point does Penelope waver from that faithfulness. Even as suitors come from all of the surrounding islands to try to win her hand, she thwarts their attempts through trickery, always waiting for her husband the wanderer.
Penelope comes into the spotlight in The Odyssey’s Books 17, 18, and 19, as Odysseus finally returns home. Penelope is treated, up until this point, as the reason Odysseus strives so hard to return home; she’s the beacon he’s drawn to, like a moth to a light. Here, however, we learn of another side of Penelope; that she is both clever and devious. Odysseus learns that Penelope has been putting the suitors off by claiming that she must weave a burial shroud for Odysseus’ father before she can remarry; each night, after weaving, however, she secretly pulls the threads of the shroud out, thus putting the suitors off longer. Penelope, then, is not only immensely faithful to Odysseus, but also clever in her devising a way to put the suitors off. Additionally, in Merrill’s translation, he identifies Penelope as being a “bird of lamentation”; she is devastated that her husband is gone and possibly lost, but resolute in her desire to remain faithful to him, and, as a bird, perhaps she is “calling” out to him, and thus brining him home.
Almost 3000 years later, Penelope is still a prevalent character in both art and literature. One of her most interesting and most recent treatments can be found in Tad Williams’ (b. 1957 AD)Otherland series, which was first introduced in 1996 AD, and was completed in 2001 AD. This series chronicles the adventures of a diverse group of people in the near-future as they try to unravel the mystery of a virtual-world conspiracy. One man, Paul Jonas, is stuck within this virtual world, his mind flitting between various computer simulations, his memory completely gone; he is unaware he is stuck in the world, but is focused on trying to return home, wherever that may be.
Jonas, then, is a wanderer, just as Odysseus is in the Odyssey, and Jonas too has a Penelope. The character that acts as his draw in Otherland is a young girl he had tutored at one point, and who, we learn as the books progress, the computer world made virtual copies of in many various guises. Each virtual world treats the Penelope character differently; in one, she is Varla, a winged princess of Mars; in another, she is a frozen oracle in a gigantic freezer. No matter how this character is portrayed, however, she always provides Jonas with the hope of not only finding out who he is, but also getting out of the computer simulation. Each time Jonas encounters the Penelope character, she gives him a little more information concerning both his past and how to escape from the computer simulation; Jonas, then, is on a constant quest to find the Penelope in each world and gain more information. The Penelope character in this series, then, no matter how she appears, is the draw for the protagonist. At one point Jonas is thrown into a simulation where he is Odysseus, and the Penelope character is Penelope; in this particular simulation, the role of the Penelope character is very prominent. She promises Jonas that he will soon be able to return home, and tells him how to do that. Additionally, throughout the simulations, the Penelope character is associated with birds and lamentation, such as when she is a winged Martian princess, or when she was a caged bird in a giant’s castle; we learn later that the girl herself was killed by falling from a very high tower, trying to be free, like a bird.