[1] Select Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Richard Garnett, Kegan Paul Trench & Co., 1882, p. 149.
[2] Od. x. 278, 279; cf. Il. XXIV. 347, 348.
[3] Talking of Homer Fielding says, "I had the curiosity to ask him whether he had really writ that poem [the Iliad] in detached pieces and flung it about all over Greece, according to the report that went of him. He smiled at my question, and asked me whether there appeared any connection in the poem; for if there did he thought I might answer for myself." This was first published in 1743, and is no doubt intended as a reply to Bentley. See Jebb's Introduction to Homer, ed. 1888, note 1 on p. 106.
[CHAPTER IV.]
JEALOUSY FOR THE HONOUR AND DIGNITY OF WOMAN—SEVERITY AGAINST THOSE WHO HAVE DISGRACED THEIR SEX—LOVE OF SMALL RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES—OF PREACHING—OF WHITE LIES AND SMALL PLAY-ACTING—OF HAVING THINGS BOTH WAYS—AND OF MONEY.
Not only does the writer shew a markedly greater both interest and knowledge when dealing with women, but she makes it plain that she is exceedingly jealous for the honour of her sex, and by consequence inexorable in her severity against those women who have disgraced it. Goddesses may do what they like, they are not to be judged by mortal codes; but a mortal woman who has fallen must die.
No woman throughout the Odyssey is ever laughed at. Women may be hanged but they must not be laughed at. Men may be laughed at, indeed Alcinous is hardly mentioned at all except to be made more or less ridiculous. One cannot say that Menelaus in Books iv. and xv. is being deliberately made ridiculous, but made ridiculous he certainly is, and he is treated as a person of far less interest and importance than his wife is. Indeed Ulysses, Alcinous, Menelaus, and Nestor are all so like one another that I do not doubt they were drawn from the same person, just as Ithaca and Scheria are from the same place. Who that person was we shall never know; nevertheless I would point out that unless a girl adores her father he is generally, to her, a mysterious powerful being whose ways are not as her ways. He is feared as a dark room is feared by children; and if his wife is at all given to laughing at him, his daughter will not spare him, however much she may cajole and in a way love him.