The Myth of Penelope | Odysseus's Wife, Son Telemachus, the Suitors, the Bed, and the Ending Explained

Every night, a feast is underway in the palace. Yet Penelope, the mistress of the house, hardly welcomes these guests. Her husband Odysseus has long failed to return from Troy, with no way even to confirm whether he is alive or dead, and her home is now filled with people trying to squander another's property.

Her son Telemachus does not yet have the strength to drive them out, so Penelope had to endure the situation alone. Let us follow, in the order the events unfolded, the methods she chose to buy time and to verify the real Odysseus.

Weaving the Shroud by Day, Unraveling It by Night

When the suitors pressed her to marry, Penelope set one condition. She would decide on remarriage only after finishing the shroud to be used when her father-in-law Laertes passed from the world.

The suitors accepted this. But what Penelope wove at her loom by day, she secretly unraveled again by night, unseen by anyone. The shroud was never going to be completed.

This worked for a while. But one maidservant who knew the secret eventually betrayed it to the suitors, and Penelope, caught in the act with her half-woven cloth, could stall no longer.

One method of buying time was gone, yet the suitors did not get their answer right away either. Penelope still had one more condition to offer.

The Condition: She Would Marry Whoever Could String the Bow

After more time had passed, Penelope set a condition that was no evasion but a direct confrontation. She would marry whoever could string Odysseus's bow and shoot an arrow through the holes of twelve axes lined up in a row.

This bow was not a thing just anyone could handle. The suitors stepped forward one by one and tried to string it, but not one of them even managed to bend the bow.

At last, a stranger present there—none other than Odysseus himself—picked up the bow. First checking whether worms had bored into the long-neglected bow, he strung it without any great effort and pierced all twelve axes in a single shot.

Thus the condition Penelope had set was fulfilled. But the marriage was not concluded on the spot, nor did the suitors withdraw. Revealing who the man who strung the bow was, and the remaining suitors paying the price, were still matters for the next scene.

What Happened at Once in the Very Hall Where the Bow Was Strung

The punishment of the suitors did not take place somewhere other than where the bow contest occurred. It was the very next scene, continuing immediately in the same hall where the twelve axes had been pierced, without anyone moving elsewhere.

Penelope, however, did not watch that scene with her own eyes. She had been in the same place until the bow contest, but while the suitors met their end, she was not in the hall.

As a result, the suitors who had long occupied the palace met their end in that hall. But for Penelope, the news did not immediately lead to a reunion with her husband. One thing still remained for her to verify.

The Immovable Bed: How She Confirmed He Was Truly Her Husband

Even after the suitors were all gone, Penelope did not at once accept the man before her as her husband. Twenty years and his unfamiliar appearance left her unable to be certain, and she also feared that something might be trying to deceive her.

She instructed her nurse to move the marital bed out of the room. She believed that if he were truly her husband, he would grasp at once what those words meant.

Hearing this, the man flew into a rage at once. That bed was one he had built himself around the trunk of a living olive tree as a post, so it was never something that could be moved in the first place.

The moment she saw him pinpoint this fact that no one but Odysseus could know, Penelope finally embraced him. Not the nights of unraveling the shroud, nor the moment of drawing the bow, but a single bed built from a tree trunk was the final proof that confirmed the man she had waited for.