Woman in the golden ages

by Amelia Gere Mason

says the gentle Penelope, as, tear-dimmed and constant, she weaves and unweaves the many-colored threads, and waits for her royal lord, who basks in the smiles of Calypso over the sea, and forgets her until he tires of the fascinating siren and begins to long for his home. If there was a trace of artfulness in the innocent device of the faithful wife, it was all the weapon she had to save her honor.

There is no lovelier picture of radiant girlhood than the graceful Nausicaä, as she takes the silken reins in her white hands, and drives across the plains in the first flush of the morning to help her maids “wash their fair garments in the limpid streams.” When the snowy robes are laid in the sun to dry, they play a game of ball, this daughter of kings leading all the rest. We hear the echo of her silvery laughter, and see the flash of her shining veil as her light feet fly over the greensward. But the dignity of the princess asserts itself with the forethought and sympathy of the woman in the discreet words with which she greets the destitute stranger, and modestly directs him to her royal mother. Her swift eye notes his air of distinction, his courteous address, and she naïvely wishes in her heart that the gods would send her such a husband. It is to Arête that she bids him go, to the beloved queen who shares the throne of Alcinous with “honors never before given to a woman.” Simple is this gentle lady and gracious, whether she sits in her stately palace working rare designs in crimson and purple wools, or gives wise counsel to her husband, or goes abroad among the people, who adore her as a goddess,

To heal divisions, to relieve the oppressed,
In virtue rich, in blessing others, blessed.

A more touching though less radiant figure is Andromache, who shows no trace of weakness as she folds her child to her bosom, after the tender farewell of her brave husband, and goes home, sad and prophetic, to “ply her melancholy loom,” and brood over the hopelessness of her coming fate.

These are the great Homeric types, women of simple and noble outlines, untouched by the fires of passion, wise, loyal, efficient, and brave, but rich in sympathy and all sweet affections. The central figures of the fireside, with needle and distaff in hand, they were not without a fine intelligence which, after the fashion of primitive times, found its field in the every-day problems of life. The mysteries of knowledge and speculation had not opened to them.

There is no fairer thing
Than when the lord and lady with one soul
One home possess.

This was the poet’s domestic ideal, and the ages have not brought a better one, though they have brought us many things to make it more beautiful.

But what shall we say of Helen, the alluring child of fancy and romance, who stands as an eternal type of the beauty that led captive the Hellenic world? Even this fair-haired daughter of the gods, who set nations at variance, and did so many things not to be commended, gathers a subtle charm from the domestic setting which the poet’s art has given her. She sits serenely in the midst of the woes she has brought, teaching her maidens to work after strange patterns, and weaving her own tragic story in the golden web. It does not occur to her that she is very wicked; indeed, she thinks regretfully that, after all, she is worthy of a braver man. The tears that fall do not dim her brightness. Gray-haired men go to their death under the spell of her divine loveliness, but forget to chide. She is the helpless victim of Aphrodite, who is indulgently charged with all her frailties. Twice ten years have gone since she sailed away from Sparta, but when her forgiving husband takes her home she has lost none of that mystic beauty which is “never stale and never old.” She takes her place as naturally as if she had not left it, plays again the pleasant rôle of hostess, and looks with care after the comfort of her guests. When Telemachus goes to see her, and recalls the uncertain fate of the wandering heroes, she gives him the “star-bright” veil her own hands have wrought to help dry the tears she has caused to flow. But she is troubled by no superfluous grief. What the gods send she tranquilly accepts.

When the poets began to analyze, the glamour of this witching goddess was lost, and she became a sinning, soul-destroying woman, a human Circe that lured men to ruin. But the Greeks did not like to see their idols slandered or broken, so in later times they gave her a shadowy existence on the banks of the Nile, where we catch a last glimpse of her, sitting unruffled among the palms, in all the splendor of her radiant beauty, twining wreaths of lotus-flowers for her golden hair, and learning rare secrets of Eastern looms, while men fought and died across the sea for a phantom. It is not upon these fanciful pictures, however, that we like to dwell. The Helen who lives and breathes for us is the Helen of Homer, fair and sweet, more sinned against than sinning, pitying the sorrows she cannot cure, but saved by her matchless charm from the chilling frost of mortal censure.

These women of Homer were mostly wives and daughters of kings. Whether it was because he had been greeted with gentle words and caressing smiles by the fair patricians to whom he recited his verses that he painted them in such glowing colors, or because the women of the heroic age really had the unstudied grace and simple dignity that spring from conscious freedom, we cannot know. But it is certain that the measure of honor and liberty which they enjoyed was a privilege of caste rather than of sex, though it gave them a virile quality, and added a fresh luster of spontaneity to their domestic virtues.