Hmm, keeping with the weaving mechanics… can’t one just weave a little bit, and when nobody’s seeing, unweave it a little bit, and so on? I think that if you did a lot of weaving and suddenly next morning all is considerable undone, everyone would notice it.
I had a nice post written out the other day, must have clicked the wrong button because it never showed up, or else its lost in posting netherworld…
I remember in college a number of professors (not just in classics but other arts as well) directing every little thing into fear/envy of women/birth etc. Perhaps there was an academic ‘womb-envy’ movement I wasn’t aware of. I don’t get the creepy or ‘serial-killer’ aspect of it though. There were a few good points. “weaving” is a rich metaphor. I am surprised he left out the story of arachne, the ‘evil-weaver with an attitude’ (turned into a spider by athena for declaring her weaving skills superior to athena’s)
But you don’t need to understand/listen to him or others to read Homer. That is the beauty of learning the original language. The poet’s thoughts/ideas/art aren’t filtered through anyone else’s opinion and we are able to form our very own thoughts about it.
I always understood penelope and her loom as a metaphor, she is doing what she can to remain a good wife until her man comes home. Using the loom (like a good ancient wife) - which also belongs to Athene, who is oddysseus’ protector. Maybe it doesn’t accurately reflect the mechanics of weaving. It is most probable that Homer never sat down and learned the craft. but poetry was never meant to be taken literally.
Penelope is perhaps a more complex figure than that of a’ good little wife ‘. According to Apollodorus she later incestuously married Odysseus’ son Telegonus . Herodotus and Apollodorus both report that the goat-God Pan was her son . Some say the father was Hermes others that he was fathered by all her lovers collectively ! Even in Homer she is depicted as encouraging them on occasion.
Servius records a tradition that she gave birth to Pan while Odysseus was away and that he was so horrifed by the sight of the monstrous child that he resumed his travels .
The mythographers also record tales that she was driven out or even killed by Odysseus on his return precisely because of her adultery with the suitors .
The story of Penelope and her loom just strikes me as funny. When I read this, I imagine the Greek audience sniggering about it.
The idea of Pelenelope weaving during the day and then unweaving at night – for three years – is silly. But the premise of this is even sillier.
Even if Pelenlope is lying to the suitors, still, the suitors are purported to believe (temporarily) the following: That Penelope is (1) willing to marry one of them, but (2) before marrying, she has to weave a shroud, for another man, who is not her husband, and who is not yet dead. She is, supposedly, not in principle opposed to a marriage, but wants to wait years… until her weaving is finished. That is silly on its face. Can’t she get one of the house slaves to help her? Can’t she marry first and then continue the weaving? Why not, exactly? She will put off a marriage for years because of this?
I may be out on a limb here, but I think this story is meant to be a joke, and it is at the suitors’ expense. My reaction is, “Who the heck would believe this excuse??” The joke is that the suitors were taken in for three years by this transparently false excuse. I think it’s an extension of their moral ineptitude, extended out to plain, undifferentiated ineptitude.
I’m pretty ignorant of Greek culture and society, but maybe it has to do with those. Maybe she can’t get married first because then all responsibility she had with her ex-husband’s family would be broken, and for now she’s the only one responsible for the old man.
There is a famous article on the symbolism of weaving in Greek literature from a feminist perspective
http://www.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/ayliu/research/klindienst.html
‘The Voice of the Shuttle is Ours’ by Patricia Klindienst
This is her view of Penelope ;
“Philomela’s weaving is the new, third term in what Greek culture often presents us as two models of the woman weaver, the false twins: virtuous Penelope, continually weaving and unraveling a shroud, and vicious Helen, weaving a tapestry depicting the heroics of the men engaged in the war they claim to fight over her body. But in either case the woman’s weaving serves as sign for the male poet’s prestigious activity of spinning his yarns, of weaving the text of the Trojan War. For their weaving to end, Homer’s text/song must end. Both women weave because the structure of marriage is suspended. They will stop weaving when they are reunited with their proper spouses, when the war ends.”
I would not recommend this article to anyone who is offended by violent imagery . Though it is not by a male-classicist-serial-killer but an eminent feminist it is much more extreme in its imagery than Prof . Nirenburg is.
After what I heard about male classisist serial killing perverts, I don’t think I dare to read this one. 
Penelope is perhaps a more complex figure than that of a’ good little wife ‘. According to Apollodorus she later incestuously married Odysseus’ son Telegonus . Herodotus and Apollodorus both report that the goat-God Pan was her son . Some say the father was Hermes others that he was fathered by all her lovers collectively ! Even in Homer she is depicted as encouraging them on occasion.
I wasn’t familiar with this side of the story. I just love how there are so many different sides to the myths, depending on who you read.
Scholars and Weavers .
I came across this passage while reading Goethe’s Faust;
(Mephistopheles dressed in scholar’s robes deliberately bamboozles a naive student with mock sophistry.)
“The web of thought ,I’d have you know
is like a weavers masterpiece
swift darts the shuttle to and fro
unseen the threads unnumbered flow
one treadle governs many a thread
and at a stroke a thousand yarns are wed
and then forward scholars step to show
and prove to you it must be so
to weave a proof that things begin
without doubt from an origin…
this method everywhere the scholars clutch
as weavers though ,they don’t amount to much.”