Essay On The Role Of Women In The Odyssey

It is common knowledge that women, throughout history, have been subservient to men. This is proven through art, music, literature, and historical events. When reading Homer’s The Odyssey or Valmiki’s The Ramayana it appears that at face value, once again, the women within these tales are trapped beneath the patriarchal rule. While I am not disputing this—as there are perhaps thousands of scholarly works supporting this statement—I would like to politely disagree that these women were allowed no freedom. Though Penelope and Sita are stuck in the roles that their respective societies bound them by, they are able to manipulate those roles to help influence the men that lord over them, thus bending the value of obedience within their respective cultures.
Because both of these
Sita’s refusal to do as she’s told is not met with scorn or distaste like Penelope’s actions are. When Sita tells Rama that she is going with him or will take her own life, Rama meets her declaration with acceptance and recognizes that her argument is valid. This, however, is not what happens later in the epic when Sita and Laksmana are worried that Rama has been lead deeper into the forest by the demon Marcia. Laksmana claims that, even though he knows he is right, Sita’s accusations have hurt him and he know that women are “easily led away from dharma; they are fickle and sharp-tongued” and thus heads off into the forest in search of Rama, leaving Sita alone despite Rama’s orders (1191). While Sita is allowed to speak her mind to her husband she—like Penelope—must watch what she says to men that she is not intimately bound to. While both women live in different cultures and are still bound by the laws of such, they do not let those laws interfere with how they live their