Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World Through the Women Written Out of It

Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World Through the Women Written Out of It by Emily Hauser

Emily Hauser is the author of THE GOLDEN APPLES TRILOGY, a retelling of several Greek myths. But in Penelope’s Bones, she puts her Classics/Ancient History scholarship to work in the service of non-fiction, using her own knowledge and a veritable mountain of cross-discipline evidence to re-examine the role of women in Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, while also using those works to animate the real women of the Bronze Age the fictional portrayals only hint at. A highly successful marriage of history and literary criticism, Penelope’s Bones will reward those interested in ancient history, Classical literature, or the modern retellings of Classical myths and legends that have been so prevalent lately.

Hauser’s general premise is that despite the lack of “page time” in the epics, and the way the women are so frequently silenced (either within the text by the various male heroes or outside the text by Homer), women are not mere background noise. She points to the “central paradox” in Homer:

the claim the epics make that women don’t matter and the fact that in every case they are essential to the story and the myth. There wouldn’t be an epic without a Muse. There wouldn’t be a Trojan War without a Helen. The Iliad wouldn’t begin without a Briseis. The Odyssey wouldn’t end with a Penelope.

And after a wide-ranging introduction that sets some context and offers some background explanation/exploration in areas such as Greek history, recent archaeological discoveries, how the epics came to be, the attitude toward women and gender, and more, Hauser gets down to proving her point regarding the centrality of women to the stories. She devotes each chapter to a female character from either The Iliad or The Odyssey, using them as a springboard for discussion and as a representative of a role or experience:

• Helen (Women at War)
• Briseis (Slave)
• Chryseis (Daughter)
• Hecuba (Queen)
• Andromache (Wife)
• Cassandra (Prophet)
• Aphrodite and Hera (Seducer and Matriarch)
• Thetis (Mother)
• Penthesilea (Warrior)
• Athena (gender fluidity)
• Calypso (Weaving)
• Nausica (Bride)
• Arete (Host)
• Circe (Witch)
• Eurycleia (Handmaid)
• Penelope (End)

As noted, Hauser makes use of a wide range of evidence as she brings the women of the time to life. Besides the texts themselves (which she is careful to point out cannot be read simply as “history”), she turns to archaeological findings, DNA tests, grave artifacts, ancient artwork, trade goods pulled up from an ancient shipwreck, geological studies, climate data based on tree rings and other sources, strontium tests on ancient teeth to determine diet and regional placements, letters and lists inscribed in clay tablets dug up from Sumeria, the Hittite Empire, Egypt, and other sites, and more.

It’s truly an impressive marshalling of cross-disciplinary research and grounds her claims firmly in the data. And when the data isn’t fully there or requires more interpretation, she makes clear that she is moving into the more speculative realm. Something I appreciated, particularly in those (rare) moments when I thought she was moving onto less solid ground, as in the section on gender fluidity for instance (I thought her general argument — that even then gender was less binary than we tend to believe — was strong and well supported, but when she tried to tie it more specifically to a discovered burial site she pushed it a bit too far). That said, I can see how some people might wish for a little less information, say, about pig husbandry/sacrifices or regional trade goods, but I’d rather this type of book errs on the side of “too much” information rather than too little. And to be clear, I personally didn’t consider it too much; I just can imagine some would in spots.

The entire text was strong throughout, but I’ll mention a few favorite elements. One is the way she shows how much of our view either of the portrayal of women in the classical texts or the role of women in this period is often based less on objective findings and more on subjective (read as women-trivializing) interpretation, starting with the Greeks that came after Homer and moving up to more modern times. Multiple examples are provided, for instance, of how bodies found buried with weapons were simply assumed to be male without any attempt to discover if that was actually the case or not. Of course, it turned out not to be, as recent DNA testing of such gravesites has revealed that anywhere from 20-40 percent of bodies buried with weapons were in fact female. In a similar vein, Hauser notes how one body was noted to be buried with a sword, but when it became clear the body was female, the archaeologist’s record magically transformed the sword into a far less significant “dagger.”

Another favorite section debunked the whole “The Classical world was a world of white” — white statuary, white temples, white clothes. Similar to the above examples, where misogyny led the interpretation down the wrong-but-desired path, here a racist view of whiteness as purity and sophistication did the same. Because of course it turns out that the Classical world was a riot of color, whether we’re talking painted statues, painted columns, or brightly dyed clothing.

Perhaps the most powerful section though comes when Hauser spends a goodly amount of time examining the dangers of childbirth during the Bronze Age (for both mother and child). Here she once again pulls together a wide range of source material and disciplines (DNA tests, strontium, bookkeeping records, etc.) to show not only how appallingly common it was for women to die giving birth but how this was not due simply to lack of modern medicine but the result of systemic disparities in food distribution that saw women receiving far, far less. This meant not only were they weak at the time of childbirth, but this lifelong malnutrition also meant they had more narrow pelvises than normal, making childbirth far more dangerous. A physical reality that was exacerbated by being constantly pregnant, further weakening their bodies and never giving them the chance to fully recover.

Emily Hauser

Finally, I’ll just add that Hauser does put on her fiction writer’s cap at the beginning of each section, giving us a brief vignette with that chapter’s woman in a more vibrant narrative style before shifting smoothly back into non-fiction mode. It’s a nice touch (and probably not a bad advertisement for her trilogy).

Any issues I had with Penelope’s Bones were quite minor. A few spots as noted where she may have pushed connection a bit too far for my own liking. Maybe a few times where we may not have needed quite so much detail. A chapter where the representative characters — the handmaids Odysseus killed at the end of his story — felt a bit detached from the larger historical points she was exploring (an example perhaps where the structure tied her hands a bit too much). None of them had any large impact at all. If you’re at all interested in ancient history, Greek epics and myths, the ways in which we let our biases lead us astray in our interpretation of “objective history,” or have enjoyed one or more of the recent retellings that have become such a publishing trend, then you’ll find Penelope’s Bones informative, thoughtful, thought-provoking, stimulating, and generally fascinating. Highly recommended.