Question

Read the passage from The Odyssey - Penelope. Ruses serve my turn to draw the time out—first a close-grained web I had the happy thought to set up weaving on my big loom in the hall. I said, that day: 'Young men—my suitors, now my lord is dead let me finish my weaving before I marry, or else my thread will have been spun in vain. It is a shroud I weave for Lord Laertes when cold Death comes to lay him on his bier. The country wives would hold me in dishonor if he, with all his fortune, lay unshrouded.' I reached their hearts that way, and they agreed. So every day I wove on the great loom, but every night by torchlight I unwove it; and so for three years I deceived the Akhaians. Which line from the passage best shows that Penelope is clever?

Answer 1

So every day I wove on the great loom, but every night by torchlight I unwove it; and so for three years I deceived the Akhaians.

Answer 2

So every day I wove on the great loom, but every night by torchlight I unwove it; and so for three years I deceived the Akhaians.

 

This line shows that Penelope is clever because at the beginning of the passage, Penelope requests that the suitors leave her alone and not ask her to marry until she finishes weaving a death shroud she had already started because if she were not allowed to finish, her efforts at beginning the shroud would have been in vain.  To this appeal to their emotions, the suitors agree.  And, knowing the suitors would respect her request, at the end of a day of weaving, she would undo all she had done in the daytime thereby keeping the suitors at bay for 3 years.