The Women of Homer's Odyssey Homer's Odyssey is typically seen as a male-dominated poem: the hero is male and most of the characters they are male. We follow the men in their attempt to return to Ithaca. However, even if women are not the protagonists, they are omnipresent in much of the story. Women play a very important role in the movement of the plot: they all want to marry, help or hurt Odysseus. During his journey, Ulysses meets three different women who want him as a husband: Circe, Calypso, Nausicca, and finally a woman who is his real wife: Penelope. Each of these women has a profound effect on Odysseus' journey home. Yet, even though these women are much more powerful than ordinary Greek women, they still carry a certain semblance of the "good woman" in Greek society. Circe, although not the first woman we meet in the Odyssey, is the first woman Odysseus meets on his journey. return journey from the Trojan War. She's not a normal woman! She is not kept separate from men outside of her oikos as proper women should be (Pomeroy 21). Good Greek women must be accompanied by a male member of their oikos whenever they are in the presence of unfamiliar men. "The visitor to the Greek house met only the male members of the family; when there were strangers in the house, t... middle of paper... the husband and everyone attempted to achieve this in different ways." It is interesting to see that, even though there are numerous men in the story, women seem to unite in power over Odysseus' journey: holding him hostage or letting him go depending on the various slightly evil women (except Penelope, of course) seem to demonstrate the fact that Greek men are wary of the power of unconfined and unaccompanied women. Works Cited Homer The Odyssey New York: 1996 Kebric, R.B. Greek People. 2nd ed. London: 1997. Pomeroy, SB Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece New York: 1997.