Trust
Homer tries to point out that women cannot be trusted by showing numerous instances that women betray or trick men. Even before the book, The Odyssey, there are many occurrences where women are to be believed as people who could not be trusted. While reading Genesis, the audience finds that Eve is the one who picks the apple off the tree. Revealing her disloyalty. In The Odyssey, there are many dealings where this major theme of women continually repeats itself in books nine through twelve, where the lustful goddess, Circe tricks Odysseus’s men, and Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife kills her own husband. We read numerous times about Agamemnon’s story. Odysseus doesn’t let Penelope know everything because when he goes to Hades in Book 11, he sees Agamemnon, who warns him to not trust Penelope when he returns home. Agamemnon says:
So don’t go easy on your own wife either
Or tell her everything you know.
Tell her some things, but keep some hidden.
…But my wife did not let me
Even fill my eyes with the sight of my son.
She killed me before I could do even that.
But let me tell you something, Odysseus:
Beach your ship secretly when you come home.
Women just can’t be trusted anymore.
Odysseus is not the only one man who is tricked by a woman. Can You think of another time the men were tricked by the women of the novels that we have read thus far?
If you believe that the women are trustworthy and it is the men who can’t be trusted. Please explain why.
I believe that there are times when both women and men can’t be trusted and it is completely independent of a character’s gender. In Calypso’s case, she can’t be trusted because it is unfair of her to take Odysseus when he did nothing to her. However, in the case of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra only killed him because he sacrificed their daughter. She wasn’t crazy or irrational. I believe men and women can and can’t be trusted, it simply depends on who it is. The male characters in The Odyssey try to make women seem like their insane and can’t be trusted because they don’t take time to look in the mirror and analyze their own actions.
Trust comes from respecting each person in relationship. You are hoping that your partner is going to be loyal,but at the same time you have that fear that he/she is going to cheat. When you become fearful that is when your trust is ruined. I believe that we simply should respect each person,in order to avoid being feeling cheated on. I also agree with you that women at that time lacked analytical thinking and did not think about consequences that may lead. After reading Canto 5 in Dante’ s Divine Comedy,I was again astonished how men and women cheat in different ways. For example,Francesca(character that appears in second circle of hell for the sin of lust)who is married for political reasons,had an affair with her husband’s brother. She is the initiator of this incest,which is sinful. However,talking with Dante,she does not realize the sin of lust and feels offended,when their life was ended up by the betrayal husband who slew them both. Her theory suggests that feeling passion with her naked lover, suggests the meaning of eternal love.”Love,quick to kindle in the gentle heart,seized this one for the beauty of my body,torn from me,(How it happened still offends me!) (Canto 5,lines 99-102)Her sensual feeling creates the sin,however do you think the feeling of passion,which arises from”desire”and “will”, is directly linked to “true” love? Or should eternal love be developed overtime and should be seen as “stilnovistic love-…distant,nonsexual and idea…?”(Musa,119)