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Curt Howard

English 2111

Dr. Gerald Lucas

Feb 20, 2005

Solid As A Tree

The scene is which Penelope tests her husband’s knowledge of their wedding bed neatly brings together several ideas that the epic has touched on before.  This subtle test reveals Penelope’s clever side – the side we have seen in her ploy to use a never to be finished burial shroud to put off remarriage for four years.  This test not only admits Odysseus to Penelope’s arms but also sheds some light on why their love for each other is so natural in the first place.  They are united by the commonality of their minds, by their love of scheming, testing, and outmaneuvering.  They are kindred spirits, because they are kindred wits.  None of the suitors could ever replace Odysseus, just as Circe or Calypso could never replace Penelope.  Literally and metaphorically, no one can move their wedding bed built from, and literally attached to, a tree. 

Keep is mind in this scene, that just because Odysseus has killed her suitors, Penelope has to be absolutely sure Odysseus is really her husband. Penelope remains wary, afraid that a God is playing a trick on her. She knows that only her husband knows about their pact, their pledge, their secret sign, (the immovable bed).  She orders Eurycleia to move her bridal bed, and Odysseus suddenly flares up at her that their bed is immovable, explaining how it is built from the trunk of an olive tree around which the entire house has been constructed (The Odyssey, book XXIII, page 496).  Hearing him recount these details, she knows this man must be her husband.

The wedding bed symbolizes the constancy and commitment of Penelope and Odysseus’ marriage.  Only a single maidservant (Eurycleia) has even seen the bed, and it is where the happy couple spent their first night in each other’s arms since Odysseus’s departure for Troy twenty years earlier.  The symbolism is heightened by the trick that Penelope uses to test Odysseus, which revolves around the immovability of their bed – a metaphor for the unshakable foundation of their love.