Another late post :(

(Note: Sorry for the lateness! I've been having some computer trouble, and I wasn't able to post yesterday.)

Odysseus and Penelope finally have their joyful reunion.

In episode XXIII of The Odyssey, Penelope is reluctant to believe that her husband has actually returned. At first, I was confused as to why she felt as though she needed to test him, but then I thought back to the times I had read The Odyssey--during my freshman year of college and all the way back in the 6th grade. I realized that because Penelope had been approached by frauds in the past, it was understandable that she would be skeptical.

My 6th grade teacher claimed that Penelope knew that the visitor was her husband the entire time, and was simply attempting to impress him with her thoroughness and caution. I'm not sure if anyone else has addressed this idea, but I think that is an interesting one, albeit a bit of a stretch, and not something that I would have thought of on my own at all. However, I don't think that a woman who loved her husband as much as Penelope claimed to would feel the need to impress her husband by playing games with him. That seems very childish to me.

Penelope playing coy is one explanation for her suspicion, but I think that Penelope was so cautious because she believed the visitor to be her husband, and that she was testing him because she wanted to be certain; she didn't want to get her hopes up only to be wrong and find out that the man was only a stranger. After all, it's a terrible feeling to have one's hopes dashed.

A song from a movie based on the Odyssey that I watched with both my 6th grade class, and my LSIC class.