Question

Considering your reading of The Odyssey, choose a viewpoint on whether Helen is an innocent woman or is scheming and disloyal to her husband. Then, in no less than seventy-five words, describe her mindset as she descended from her own rooms in the palace to the hall where Menelaus and the guests were waiting and seated herself. Whichever viewpoint you choose, justify your ideas by means of the text.

Answer 1

It was 20 years since Odysseus had left his palace, but still his wife Penelope had some hope he would return, though most believed him dead. Many suitors had come to woo "the widow". She put them off with a ruse, persuading them to wait until she had finished a funeral shroud for Laertes, Odysseus's father, which she wove by day and secretly unravelled by night. In this way she managed to deceive them for three years. While they waited, the suitors made themselves the king's uninvited guests, eating him out of house and home. But then Penelope's ruse was discovered and the suitors demanded a decision. She came up with another ruse, an archery contest. She would marry whoever could string Odysseus's bow and fire it through 12 axes. The bow once belonged to the archer Eurytus, grandson of Apollo, and no one, she hoped, could wield it.