The Penelopiad: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

Penelope opens Chapter 6, which continues in her first-person narrative, by saying that her marriage was arranged. Most marriages, she notes, were arranged at the time. According to the old rules of her day, only “important people” got married, because the point of marriage was to transfer inheritances. Other people had love affairs, sometimes even with gods, but did not actually get married. When goddesses had affairs with mortals, the man often ended up dead.

Penelope thinks that the gods often enjoyed making messes with their love affairs. Penelope finds this nasty and childish, and she no longer worries about the repercussions of making such a statement because the gods seem to have “gone to sleep.”

Penelope returns to the subject of marriages, stating that marriages were for having children, and having children was for passing down inheritances and forging alliances. Often men would kill their enemies’ babies after killing them or send them far away so that they would not be killed by them later. Daughters, Penelope notes, were only for breeding grandsons. It was important to have lots of men in the family to go to war. Hence, Penelope needed to marry.

At Icarius’s court, they maintained the custom of having physical contests to determine who would marry Penelope. The winner of the contest was then expected to live at Icarius’s palace. Through the marriage, the man would become wealthy.

Penelope calls the treasures men received in the form of the bride’s dowry “trash” because most of them ended up in the bottom of the sea. Those that didn’t were put instead in palaces with no royals living in them, and that normal people would go to look at (i.e. museums), and then would buy souvenirs in the “sort of market inside the palace” (i.e. the gift shop). Penelope emphasizes that this is why she calls the treasures “trash.”

The ancient customs required the treasure to stay in the bride’s family’s palace. Penelope thinks that this custom is why, after Icarius tried to throw her into the sea, he became so attached to her. Penelope then questions again why he tried to kill her, noting that every time she sees him in the afterlife, he hurries away from her. Penelope thinks maybe she was a failed sacrifice to Poseidon, the sea god.

Penelope then describes herself as a girl of fifteen, looking out her window at the young men getting ready to compete to marry her. She peeks out from behind her veil through the window quickly, so the men cannot see her unveiled face. She has been made up as beautifully as possible, but she still feels shy. Below, the men laugh and joke. Penelope thinks that it’s not her that the men want, but the treasure they would gain in marrying her. No man, she thinks, would die for love of her.

This prediction turns out to be true. Helen, on the other hand, loved to make man grovel and feel miserable out of love and desire for her and then break their hearts. Though Helen was prettier, Penelope was kinder than Helen, and cleverer. Penelope muses that men prefer their wives to be clever as long as they are some distance away from them, and that up close they prefer kindness.

As Penelope continues to study the men from the window, she tries to figure out who each is and which one she prefers. Several maids accompany Penelope, since until she is married she is at risk of eloping or being kidnapped. The maids gossip, laugh, and joke, gaining information about the bachelors for Penelope.

Penelope asks about one barrel-chested man below, and the maid tells her he is Odysseus, the son of a lesser King of provincial Ithaca. Odysseus is not considered a serious contender for Penelope, but he is known to be very smart, even potentially deceptive. Odysseus’s grandfather, Autolycus, was known to be the same way.

Penelope wonders aloud how fast Odysseus can run, since the contest to marry her is a running race. One maid remarks that he probably cannot run very fast since his legs are so short. Another says he is not fast enough to catch Penelope, and makes a joke about Hermes and Odysseus being a thief. Several other maids join in with sexual jokes and innuendos. They all laugh. Meanwhile, Penelope is extremely embarrassed.

Next, Helen approaches Penelope, walking with an exaggerated sway to try to get attention. She is extremely beautiful and perfectly dressed, to Penelope’s annoyance. She looks at Penelope in a way that she thinks is almost flirtatious, and Penelope notes wryly that Helen would flirt with anything, even “her bedpost.”

Helen states that she thinks Odysseus would make a good husband for Penelope, and that if she went to Ithaca with him her life would certainly be quiet. Helen then says meanly that Odysseus and Penelope are “two of a kind” since they both have short legs. The maids laugh and Penelope is upset, having never before thought of her legs as especially short. Helen, though, has a special talent for evaluating people’s looks—which ended up getting her in trouble when she left Menelaus for the much better looking Paris.

The maids look to Penelope to see what she will say in response, but Penelope is speechless. Helen tells Penelope not to worry, and that both she and Odysseus are supposedly clever, so Penelope will be able to understand the things that he says. Helen says she could not, so it is lucky that Odysseus did not win her, reminding Penelope that Odysseus had tried to win Helen’s hand in marriage first and had failed, and that Penelope is “only second prize.” Helen walks away, and the maids talk admiringly of her beauty and her clothing. Penelope starts to cry and goes to her bed to lie down.

Because she was in bed, Penelope did not watch the race itself, which Odysseus won through cheating. Uncle Tyndareous helped Odysseus win by drugging the other contestants’ wine and giving Odysseus a performance-enhancing drug. Penelope remarks that in modern times this kind of manipulation has become “a tradition.” Penelope wonders why her uncle, who was not friends with Odysseus, helped him.

Penelope then recounts a rumor she heard that she “was the payment” for something Odysseus had done for Tyndareous during the competition for Helen’s marriage. Odysseus made the contestants swear to defend whichever man won Helen in case someone tried to take her away, which allowed her marriage to Menelaus to go smoothly. After his help, he made a deal with Tyndareous that he would get Penelope.

Penelope, though, has a different idea of what happened. She thinks that Tyndareous, who had to share the throne of Sparta with Icarius, wanted the throne for himself. Odysseus, rather than moving to Sparta, would take Penelope away to Ithaca, keeping Penelope’s sons from the Spartan throne.

Regardless of why, Odysseus won. Penelope remembers Helen smiling during the marriage, happy that Penelope was moving to Ithaca, which she considered a “dreary backwater.” Penelope felt dizzy during the whole ceremony, only looking at Odysseus’s legs and thinking how short they were. It made her want to laugh, and Penelope reminds the reader that, at the time of her marriage, she was only fifteen.