Heather Buzbee

Dr. Kitts
CLST 3100
8 March 2012
Timeless Women in the Odyssey
Abstract:
This essay examines how women in the Odyssey stop time with a focus on Calypso, Circe, and
Penelope. All the women in the Odyssey including monsters, nymphs, Helen and even Penelope
tend to disrupt time and the usual ways of men. Through their sexuality, female activities, and
personal abilities, Calypso, Circe, and Penelope stop time and the usual ways of men to either
help or hinder Odysseus journey home.
The Greeks believed that there are different ages that make up time. The Golden age is
the first of these ages. This age was the time of Uranus, the grandfather of Zeus. In this time the
world was in chaos. Men danced around and played with the gods. They did not work or harvest
from the land. They did not trade or war with each other. There was no history or deeds of men.
Men simply existed. Consequently, during the Golden age, time was irrelevant and in a sense
stood still. The world stayed like this for a while until the reign of Zeus, in the heroic age of
Hesiod. In this age, men performed deeds such as agriculture, trade, war, and arts, in addition to
great feats of strength and cunning. It was a time of heroes and great works of men. During this
age, history was created, and time moved forward.
In the Odyssey, even though it is set in the heroic age of Hesiod, Odysseus encounters
some monsters and creatures from the age of Uranus and Cronus. In fact all of the women he
encounters have the ability to stop time, a trait characteristic of the Golden age. The Sirens,
Scylla, Charbdis, Calypso, Circe, and even Penelope, Helen, and Nausicaa have the power to
stop time or at least delay it for a while. The Sirens, monsters who try to lure Odysseus to their
island, stop time by perpetually singing the immortal deeds of men and nothing else. This act
makes men want to come to their island and listen to their songs forever; therefore stopping time
from going anywhere else and men as well (Foley 62). Scylla and Charbdis, sea monsters who

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swallow up men, stop time by gobbling up men and destroying any future deeds or endeavors,
which kills future history and consequently time. Nausicaa, though she does not necessarily
hinder Odysseus or stop time, almost does through the power of her sexuality and youth;
Nausicaa tempts Odysseus to stop his journey and stay with her on her island. She can do this
because she is female and can play upon Odysseuss own temptation and desire (Blundell 53).
Helen stops time through her sexual appeal and through other weapons in her female domain
such as her drugs in her wine that make men forget their worries and pain at that moment (Foley
62). She stops time through the work of men by making them do nothing else but war for ten
years; during a war, nothing else is accomplished but fighting. She also stops time through her
special drink which she makes in the presence of men that suspends the cares of the moment and
in a way time as well. Calypso and Circe also stop time when they have Odysseus. Even
Odysseuss wife, Penelope, delays time by stringing her suitors along. Only the Sirens, Scylla,
and Charbdis stop time by eliminating men altogether.
Some may argue that women do not actually have the power to stop time and point out
the fact that time is stationary only because there are no men around. It is true that in the heroic
age of Hesiod, the actions of men tend to create history and allow time to continue forward. Men,
as Foley and many others points out, compel time forward through their deeds because war,
quarrels between families, the need for cooperative organization of agriculture to produce food,
the succession of father by son in kingship all demand a particular control over nature and time
(Foley 65). Unfortunately, as Foley says, Calypso, Circe, and Penelopes worlds of endless
weaving and banqueting admits neither social change nor exchange. This is both its value and its
limitation (Foley 66). The worlds of Calypso and Circe and the temporary unchanging world
Penelope has created are without those elements listed above. These worlds are self-sufficient,

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but they cannot engage with other societies. They are isolated with no agriculture, commerce, or
war. This way of life is not natural in the age where time moves forward, and history exists.
However, the women still possess power because timelessness goes against this normal way of
men and is accomplished in the presence of men. Calypso suspends time with Odysseus on her
island. Circe has many men on her island and so does Penelope.
My focus will be on how Calypso, Circe, and Penelope stop time because these three
women are major characters that significantly help or hinder Odysseuss journey in the Odyssey.
All three women stop time through their sexuality. As Cantarella argues, Seduction and beauty
constitute enormous power (Cantarella 34). These three women definitely use this rule to
their advantage as well as other personal powers and abilities.
Calypso, a goddess nymph, stops time by seducing Odysseus. She captures him and
keeps him on her island for seven years to detain him from his journey back home but also
because she falls in love with him. Her sexuality is her rope to tie up Odysseus and time. Though
he tells Calypso that she is far more beautiful and cunning than his wife, Penelope, but that he
loves Penelope more, he still sleeps with Calypso again before he leaves. He may be pining for
Penelope, but he is not so desperate to get away that he would risk offending a goddess by
refusing to sleep with her. Odysseuss desire to get home does not hold a candle to the sheer
might of Calypsos sexual power. In fact, he only leaves because she is forced to let him go, not
through any power of his own. Calypso also stops time through her immortal powers. Odysseus
knows that if he defied her or tried to leave without her permission, she would simply smite him.
He even asks her before he begins to make a raft to leave if this is some kind of a trick and if she
will just kill him when he leaves her. This attests to her power as a goddess.

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Circe, a witch, stops time through her sexual appeal as well. Unlike Calypso, she stops
many men on her island. Circe would lure men to her house where she would be singing and
weaving with plenty of wine and food to spare. Then, when the men got comfortable she would
turn them into animals. She entices men through her feminine wiles and through her singing and
work at the loom, both of which lie in the domain of women. But beyond the mortal female
domain, Circe, like Calypso, also has immortal powers of her own. She also uses a drug in the
drink she makes to make the men forget about home, almost like Helen later on in the Odyssey
(Blundell 52). Circe is a sorceress who maintains an unchanging existence on her island by
transforming her guests from threatening humans to tame animals (Foley 62). This line says a
lot about Circe because not only did she transform the men into animals but she tamed them as
well -- which is only too ironic because normally men have to tame young girls because the
young girls are wild animals. Here we have a woman who is changing the men to wild animals
and consequently taming them. Because of this she also stops the normal way of life. With all
the men as animals there are no men to interfere with her timelessness or her sphere of power.
When she does turn some of the animals back into men, she keeps them docile and lazy so they
do no work, which also preserves her unchanging island. Although here men have the ability to
break the spell of timelessness, she restricts them from changing her world, and they cannot
stand up to her power. Although she does not keep Odysseus nearly as long as Calypso, she does
stop him and the rest of his men for a little while. She captures men and allows time to stand still
at her pace.
Penelope, Odysseuss wife, stops time with the power of her sexuality too. Unlike the
goddess and the powerful witch, Penelope does not sleep with anyone; thats the point. As
Helene Foley says in her article about Reverse Similes, [Penelope] controls the sexual feelings

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which might lead her to a new marriage (Foley 62). Penelope, through her abstinence
sexually, is stopping herself from getting married and consequently stopping time from going on
without Odysseus. However, even though she is abstinent, it has the same effect as Calypso and
Circes seductions. Time has stopped in Ithaca because all the men of the kingdom woo
Penelope; they are thus prevented from maturing into husbands and warriors (Foley 62). Foley
evens says so herself that without the weapon of her sexuality Penelope could not have
preserved Ithaca for Odysseus (Foley 73).
Penelope also has a power all her own even though she is not an immortal; Foley
describes it her Athena-like intelligence (Foley 62). Penelope not only keeps everything at a
standstill, but she also keeps it at a peaceful standstill. She does this through her smarts and
through elements natural to her female domain. By not picking a suitor, the young men of Ithaca
waste away the years drinking and eating all of Odysseuss wealth. As Foley says Like Circe,
Penelope has turned her guests into swine, into unmanly banqueters, lovers of dance and song
rather than war(Foley 62). She does this through her sexuality as I mentioned before, but she
goes farther than that. She pretends to make a funeral shroud for her father-in-law. All through
the day she would weave it and all through the night she would unweave it, and she fooled all the
suitors for years. How? Well, what would men know of the ways of women? She could trick
them because it was her sphere of influence, not theirs, and there she had all the power. She also
keeps up the wealth of Odysseus by extracting bridal gifts from the suitors to make up for the
food and drink that the suitors have been consuming (Foley 61). She keeps the standstill peaceful
as well as by distract[ing] the suitors from quarreling by exciting their hopes of gaining her
hand (Foley 61). While Penelope rules Ithaca, time is frozen and preserved so that Odysseus has
time to come home back to his throne and back to her.

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In all of these situations, the women are able to use the power of suspended or delaying
time because this timelessness is in the female sphere of influence. As Foley says both
cooking and weaving retard or conquer change and The female protects what is permanent
and unchanging(Foley 66). Foley says that Penelope uses powers natural to her sphere
when she temporarily transforms Ithaca to a domestic island in which the minimum of change
and exchange take place (Foley 66). But I would go further and say that Circe and Calypso did
the same thing with their islands because there was also very little, if any, chance or exchange.
These women stop time in spite of men through the powers of their gender which include sexual
appeal and other powers within their domains.

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Works Cited
Blundell, Sue. Women in Ancient Greece. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cantarella, Eva. Pandoras Daughters. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1987.
Foley, Helene. Reverse Similes and Sex Roles in the Odyssey. Women in the ancient world:
the Arethusa papers. Ed. John Peradotto and J. P. (John Patrick) Sullivan. Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press, 1984. 59-78.
Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Ian Johnston. Virgina: Richer Resources Publication, 2006. Web.
<http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/homer/odysseytofc.htm>.

Copyright Heather Buzbee 2015