Homer clearly loves women. All his main adult heroines Helen, Andromache, Arete, and Penelope he shows to be cleverer and more realistic than their husband(s). There are no evil people in Homer, only fools; and the women are no fools.
See also here. So Helen was not abducted as in (what I suppose to be) the original myth. In fact she must be taken against her will in the charter myth because otherwise the whole thing becomes a personal matter and not a case for a military revenge campaign. But Homer disagrees and in the Iliad she makes clear that she follows Paris to Troy because she fell in love with him (e.g. Il 3.171-, Od 4.260-). It is Aphrodite who made her do this, bribing Paris with 'beauty' (μαχλοσύνη(1)) so Helen would prefer him to her husband. In mythical terms, this undercuts the argument for going to Troy with an army. It also appears to put the blame on the woman. This is not what Homer, who is always concerned to paint a positive picture of the women in his stories, is aiming for. The picture of Helen can prejudice the view of women in general. But Homer has something else to say. Significant is the remark by Priam (Il 3.164): "I do not blame you, I blame the gods". Obeying a god does not diminish our personal responsibility but we can see that: a) there are more gods involved than just Aphrodite and b) their forces work not just on her but also on the men involved. We all, gods and mortals, share the blame for the war: the Iliad makes this very clear (see e.g. the 'Deception of Zeus'-episode). Also we know - women especially - that Aphrodite can be a very dangerous god when she hates you (Il 3.414-).
It was Aphrodite who bribed Paris with this "beauty" and the falling in love of Helen is the goddess driving her to do something. This in itself does not relieve Helen of blame for her actions. But she is shown as full of remorse and self-loathing and regretting the move that she made. On the other hand, she is also shown (humorously) as true to type: she is never quite satisfied with the husband she has. See her nagging when she finds Paris in the bedroom instead of the battlefield (Il 3.428-), or her antics when Hector comes to visit (Il 6.343-).
All this approaches Helen as a full-blooded human being. Generic, but still full-blooded. But there is another aspect of her (and of Penelope, and to a lesser degree of any woman mentioned in these poems): she is The Prize. See here. Our being the Alpha Male depends on her presence, she is the image of the goddess of victory. This is something else than a human being and for us it complicates attempts to understand the women in the poems. For instance in the Odyssey, when Menelaos and his guests start weeping over all the suffering caused by the Trojan war (Od 4.219-), Helen produces a "clever medicine" (φάρμακα μητιόεντα, given to her by Πολύδαμνα 'seduces all') that will make them bear any suffering without shedding a tear. She is that medicine, acting in her capacity of being 'what men fight for' rather than as Helen the woman. Another place where this is the case is Od 4.269- where Helen tempts the heroes to come out of the wooden horse and Odysseus is the only one who keeps them in check. This is another version of Odysseus' "Stay!" theme, see here. In this scene she becomes as it were the incarnation of Aphrodite, tempting the men to obey and rush out to grab her (or rather, any woman, like Chryseis and Briseis) .
In the figures of Hector's wife Andromache and her son, Homer pulls out all the emotional stops.
She is shown to be loving, loyal, vulnerable and dependent,
just as we heroes would like to see our wives. Her
fate and that of her son Astyanax is made very clear to us.
Let us not forget that she is one of the 'Trojan wives' that Nestor is
talking about when he states that no Achaean should go home before
having slept with some Trojan's wife, in revenge for Helen (Il 2.354-). Her name says it already,
she is 'what men fight for'. In that way, she is another link between the "symbol of victory" and real
human beings.
Hector, of course, should have taken her advice (Il 6.429-) to withdraw the army behind the city wall. He apparently knows this but cannot follow it for fear of being called a coward. It is shame
that kills him (it also prevents him from going back to the city in Il 22.33-)
and she pays the price.
Did she do it? Did she sleep with one of the suitors? Homer never gives it away
but if you read between the lines the answer is clear. Of course she did, she had to.
She needed the protection of at least one of the powerful men around her to keep
her head above water. There are several
clues which give it away:
1) Telemachus' attitude towards his mother and towards the disloyal servant-girls. He knows (or suspects) and tends to blame all women for it.
2) Her whole super-careful approach. This, to her, in archaic times, is a life-and-death
situation. He can kill her and no one will lift a finger to protect her. But most telling of all:
3) Her prayer to Artemis (Od 20.61-), worth quoting here:
"Aphrodite took care of them": that should tell us enough. They lived off those gifts for they had no other means. The local men could have sex for a pound of cheese. But getting married and becoming accepted citizens?
This picture of 8th century BCE survival attempts of unprotected women should make clear the problems that Penelope faced. Odysseus knows of course but he accepts her without any hesitation. By mutual unspoken agreement they decide that nothing need be said. Nothing can be spoken out loud, not in this society. Telemachus is barely more than a child and cannot be expected to understand.
The Odyssey tells us: "go home, soldier, to your wife". He appears to discuss the soldier's and the sailor's fear: when I come home, will my wife still be my wife? The Agamemnon-Clytaemnestra story, as well as Helen and Menelaos, show that this is not a given. But Odysseus does exactly the opposite of Agamemnon's advice (Od 11.441-) and things turn out a lot better for him.
What should we do with the promiscuous servant-girls?
Take them behind the shed and...
But "take their life" can also mean "make them swoon". Together with the sexual symbolism of 'sword', this means that there could be some wordplay here and that Odysseus is proposing to punish them with the same thing that was their crime. Not altogether pc but better at any rate than the fate that Telemachus has in store for them.
The latter's treatment of the girls I think is meant to raise eyebrows. As explained elsewhere, the climax of both Iliad and Odyssey are gigantic overstatements: Homer is in Aristotelian terms, 'imitating impossibilities', technically as well as morally. The whole of both poems is geared to explaining to us that such things cannot and should not happen (fighting an army on your own, killing your host as guests or your guests as host etc.) but he uses it to reach a huge but ironical crescendo. These things are meant to shock us. Telemachus is painted as angry with his mother (see above) and his treatment of the girls looks like he is taking revenge on them for the perceived disloyalty of his mother. Am I psychologizing too much here? I leave it to the reader to judge.
"Pass by my father, go to my mother Arete and clasp her knees if you want to see your homecoming..." (Od 6.310-, Nausikaa to Odysseus). If one finds a piece of literature where the woman is the dominant force in the household, no matter how common this may be in reality, literary comedy is always suspected. I do think the Phaeacia-episode is comedy of manners. It is not a description of an earthly paradise or a bridge between the dead and the living, it is a humorous comment on contemporary habits and, as always in comedy, between what we say we are and what we actually are. The episode may also contain, as described here, basic instructions for a singer on how to visit a town where a public feast is held, with Odysseus as the visiting bard.
It is highly unlikely that bursting in to an ancient Greek household, going up to the lady of the house and embracing her knees will get you anything except thrown out, or worse. This must be comedy. As a metaphor it works better: to acquire the good opinion of the mistress of the house is probably a great advantage if you want the husband's help. One of the clever things Odysseus does is weaving in the list of heroines (and his mother) to the first part of his visit to the underworld, causing Arete to be the first to speak in praise (Od 11.336-) (Note the subsequent speech by her husband Alkinoos, reminding us that he is the chief here(Od 11.353)).
This game is called 'hunting by making noise' and it is an activity of the goddess Artemis (Keladeine) (Od 6.151), protector of virgins. Odysseus here is like one of the wild beasts that she gathers around her (6.130-): he is coming out of a hiding place like that of the wild boar that once wounded him (Od 5.475-, 19.439-). Circe can do the same trick though she is probably no virgin. The latter's picture is somewhat more complicated (see below). The picture of Nausikaa is so lovingly drawn, she must be based on someone special. Either I am not the first to feel this, or there was some remaining knowledge about the poet, but in the traditional tales about Homer there is a daughter. Her husband will be the successor of her father as leader of the Homeridae.
Nausikaa's excursion (book 6) to wash their clothes is very much like an aristeia. She has much to win (a husband), much to lose (a reputation) and successful action depends on her finding the fine line between not going far enough and going too far:
But make no mistake: Nausikaa is a handful, for her parents:
Her father is apparently not one to get angry easily. But he does offer her hand in marriage even before he knows the stranger's name... (Od 7.313)
No doubt piracy, robbery and kidknapping were real dangers for anyone living near where a ship could land and children were carefully instructed what to do when seeing strangers. A reaction like that of the Laestrygonians (Od 10.82-) seems rather more realistic.
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