“How is it that the only way for someone to become a good, heroic, strong man is to have sex with lots of women? But if a woman has sex with lots of men she’s tainted and impure and horrible” (John Green). In the epic poem The Odyssey by Homer and translated by Robert Fitzgerald, women are portrayed either as objects who only have worth in their physical attributes and ability to obey instructions, or as evil creatures who are determined to betray and destroy all males. Throughout the epic poem the majority of the monsters and evil beings Odysseus has to face are women, or some twisted version of a female. While on Aeaea, Circe warns Odysseus of the beings known as Sirens that he will need to pass in order to continue on him journey back to …show more content…
Specifically the fact that it was normal and even encouraged for men to sleep with as many women as possible, but a woman embracing her sensuality was considered disgusting and dirty. The anger and language that Telemachus and Odysseus employ as they enforce punishment onto the maids who have been deemed disloyal after sleeping with the suitors is a clear reflection of the time periods perspective, “‘I would not give the clean death of a beast / to trulls who made a mockery of my mother / and of me too--you sluts, who lay with the suitors’” (22. 514-16). Though the maids have no definite obligation to either Telemachus or Odysseus regarding their sensuality, they are punished as if they have committed an infidelity. By not giving women the power to make their own choices and shaming them if they do something that does not agree with society’s opinions, an endless loop of oppression is formed with little way out. Odysseus and Telemachus both show a lack of regret or concern after murdering a good amount of their maids, showing that mass killing they had recently completed was not considered out of place during 650 B.C. in ancient Greece, especially if the killing was off “impure” females. The maids were considered Odysseus’s property, and were technically slaves, though that offers no excuses to the brutality shown towards