In wise devices of Penelope.[[7]]
There is a significant silence about Penelope’s beauty; and she has not eternal youth as Helen has. But when we have seen her eyes light upon her boy Telemachus, and the radiance of her face as the strange old beggarman told her about her husband, we shall waive the question of æsthetics. We shall be prepared to maintain Penelope’s beauty against all-comers; and we shall not be much concerned that the poet rather avoids the subject. For he would not dream of a soul which did not know that sweetness and dignity and a gentle heart, grief endured patiently and love unswerving, would make for themselves a worthy habitation. Beside Helen’s exquisite fairness, Penelope would seem a little faded; and her sweet gravity would be almost a reproach. She cannot compare for one moment with Calypso, as Odysseus had to confess when the goddess blamed him for his homesickness:
“Goddess and mistress, be not wroth with me
Herein: for very well myself I know
That, set beside you, wise Penelope
“Were far less stately and less fair to view,
Being but mortal woman, nor like you
Ageless and deathless: but even so,
I long and yearn to see my home anew.“[[7]]
The keynote of the Odyssey is struck here; and here too we may find a hint of all that Penelope means. The thought of home is to dominate the poem, as something so dear and sacred that innumerable toils are suffered and infinite perils undergone to win back to it. And this shining ideal of home is to be incarnate in Penelope. She is to represent in her own person all that sweetens and comforts life: all the domestic virtues which establish and perpetuate it. Thus, beside Helen as the ideal of beauty—of physical perfection—Penelope stands as the ideal of mental and moral worth.