The waiting wife. The manipulative seductress. The vengeful harpies. The Odyssey’s female characters leave a lot to be desired — at least on first read. But while Homer's epic is quick to reduce its women to setpieces or struggles to be overcome, these mythic figures haven’t always depicted that way. From “Passive” Penelope’s brilliant strategic mind to the complex machinations of “dangerous lone woman” Circe, these women were never just one thing. Because no woman is.
As the Odyssey is interpreted (yet again) by Hollywood this summer, its female figures are overdue for a closer examination. A real reading of the text makes room for — and celebrates — their complexities and contradictions: Penelope rules a kingdom alone for a decade and outmaneuvers every man in it, while remaining loyal to the one she chose. Circe is the only figure in the entire epic who tells Odysseus the unvarnished truth about what lies ahead, even when it costs her his company. The Sirens remain one of language’s most pervasive and haunting tropes, but are surprisingly flat as written. Not a simple archetype among them.
As written, The Odyssey is an ensemble cast.
Titular Odysseus is, of course, the hero of the Odyssey. But it’s a story threaded through with ensemble players. Because any epic about a drawn-out return requires someone worth returning to, we have Penelope. At face-value, she’s the idyllic loyal wife, biding her time and waiting for her (less than loyal) husband’s return. But she’s more than a prize at the end of Odysseus’s trials, and the text at least grants her her wit and agency.
Elsewhere…not so much. The women of the Odyssey are largely synonymous with trials standing in the crew’s way. First, Circe: beautiful but independent, powerful without an obvious weakness. A convenient villain for a ship full of men. And later, the Sirens — a literal challenge to overcome, and one with zero interiority or expressed motives of their own. In all 12,000+ lines of Homer’s epic, their inner lives remain blank.
Still, these are characters with strange magic that continues to captivate — perhaps for what’s left out, as much as for what’s on the page.
Weaving in vain, but not waiting in vain.
Penelope is remembered as the wife who waited — a radically incomplete framing that focuses on the passive. But Penelope epitomizes smart feminine strategy. For the ten years Odysseus is gone, she presides over Ithaca as its de facto ruler, and keeps her son Telemachus alive amid a court that would benefit from his death, and manages a household under siege. Inundated with suitors who see her husband’s absence as a chance to make a name for themselves, she recognizes the politics of the situation and responds with a (seemingly) diplomatic solution in turn. That her solution requires no bloodshed is a feature, not a bug. Her most famous maneuver allows her to save face while tactfully keeping men at arm’s length: preoccupied with weaving a mourning shroud for her father-in-law Laertes, she tells suitors she will choose a husband once it is finished…before undoing her own work every night in secret. Eventually a servant reveals her secret, but for three years before that, her solution gives her the cover she needs to play the part of a dedicated daughter-in-law and keep pushy suitors at bay. A strategic coup de grace that would be envied even by today’s politicians.
The final hint of Penelope’s brilliance lies in the Odyssey’s ending: for the much-anticipated reunion between Odysseus and Penelope, he leaves the climactic moments to her wit again. When Odysseus finally returns and reveals himself, she does not accept him on his word alone. She orders a bed moved — a bed Odysseus built himself around a living olive tree, immovable by design. It’s a test — and a final moment of literary tension. Only the real Odysseus could pass, and when he does, it’s Penelope’s wit that validates the reunion. Ten years on, she remains wholly herself: with her patience, precision, and ability to demur even at the climax of the story.
Potions, pigs, and the scariest monster of all: single women.
Homer’s depiction of Circe is proof that fear of the independent woman isn’t a new phenomenon. Powerful, solitary, and untamed by any man, Circe is the perfect villain for an oral tradition that likes to sort people into boxes. On the page, Circe is a minor Goddess who lives alone on the island of Aeaea, turns Odysseus's crew into swine when they arrive uninvited, and has been marked ever since for that one act of transformation.
It’s a flattening that even the the story itself can’t seem to fully get behind: once a demonized character, a witch or seductress or both, Circe’s narrative is magically redeemed once Odysseus resists her magic and the two reach an understanding. In a remarkable reversal of narrative opinion, Circe later becomes the single most useful ally he encounters on the entire journey. Unbidden, she warns him exactly what waits ahead: the Sirens, the strait between Scylla and Charybdis, the cattle of the sun god and the dire consequences that await if he touches them. No other figure in the poem, divine or mortal, gives Odysseus this much actionable information. She has every incentive to let him sail into disaster. She has nothing to gain by protecting him. But she does it anyway.
Circe’s powers lie in transformations, and taken at face-value, she undergoes one herself. But the reversal from cruel witch to compassionate guide only works if you believe the first part, and deny the complexities of the second.
Was Circe really monstrous to begin with, or only protecting herself and her peace on a solitary island where visitors’ motives would be unknown? The potionwork that turns Odysseus’s crew into swine may be punitive, or it may be protective — an act designed to disarm, to buy herself time to decipher their motives and character. Or perhaps to reveal what was already there.
The “siren song”: a cliché built around a void.
The idea of a “siren song” is so universally understood as to be a cliché. But what that song consisted of? Nobody knows. Of every figure in the Odyssey, the Sirens are the only ones whose “song” is not described. What is described instead is the reaction: sailors compelled past reason and wrecked on the rocks, madness wrapped in the promise of seduction. Homer doesn’t describe the song or really the Sirens, only that their allure is dangerous enough the crew must plug their ears with beeswax if they are to survive, and Odysseus must be bound to the mast so he can listen without dooming them all.
In the time since, other descriptions have flooded in to fill the void like so much water rushing into a tidepool. Some versions of the myth suggest the Sirens sing not to seduce, but to offer foresight: willing to tell each listener the truth of his own life, his own future, which is, of course, its own kind of seduction. If that version holds, what did Odysseus learn, tied to the mast?
No matter what words fell on his ears, the metaphor of women’s voices (especially in unison) posing great harm is almost too culturally on-the-nose. Were the sirens monsters, or just the members of their very own aquatic whisper network? Voices poised to topple powerful men who looked down from them — a bit lustfully, a bit with horror — from their high vantage point on the deck of a great ship?
Wearing the myth: what does Odyssey jewelry mean today?
However they were originally written, wearing these mythic figures is an act of reclamation — an insistence that the story isn’t complete. Penelope is a figure for anyone who has held her life together amid a siege no one else could see, with equal parts patience and cunning, disguised as passivity. Circe is for the lone woman demonized for her autonomy, her self-sufficiency, her refusal to bend to convention. Her transformative magic is a beacon to anyone who searched for answers and, failing to find them, decided to conjure them herself. The Sirens speak truth to power. For anyone who has been called difficult for the crime of telling an inconvenient truth — which is to say, most women who have ever tried to say something in public.
The Odyssey by Awe brings these everyday truths into mythic proportions. Reverently recasting each underwritten woman into something stranger, stronger. The Circe Pendant renders her not as a cautionary tale but as a powerful figure of transformation on her own terms — wand outstretched, fully in command of a domain she built for herself. The Odysseus & The Sirens Pendant show the dual attraction and revulsion of a luminously true word, a powerful voice: a dichotomy we all navigate, albeit on land. The Siren Pearl Drop Earring flips the danger of the narrative: worn close to the ear, it’s a provocation and a promise to listen even when it hurts.
Deities, dalliances and distractions: more Odyssey women
Of course, Odysseus encounters other women in his 10-year journey. Athena, the revered Goddess of war, wit and wisdom, serves as Odysseus’s patron and protector throughout the epic. She reshapes his appearance, intervenes with other gods on his behalf, and ultimately orchestrates his final confrontation with the suitors. One feels she’s always waiting in the wings, shepherding him along. Calypso, in deep echoes of Circe’s story, keeps him on her island for seven years and eventually offers him immortality, which he refuses in favor of the flawed, mortal version of the life he seeks to resume with Penelope. Nausicaa, a princess with no obligation to help a shipwrecked stranger, is the reason Odysseus survives long enough to reach his destination at all. They’re written as supporting characters on Odysseus’s journey, but each one makes decisions and sacrifices that beg for a nuanced reading of their own.
Before it was committed to a manuscript by Homer, the Odyssey was part of an ancient oral tradition that allowed it to morph and change shape like one of Circe’s pet projects. As such, it’s a text written by crowdsourcing. And, as such, it’s colored by the average predilections and prejudices of those who told it — predominantly men.
Behind the design process: choosing materials to hold the Odyssey’s epic weight
The world’s most famous story deserves materials that honor (and deepen) its meaning. When designing The Odyssey by Awe in our Los Angeles studio, we reached for the same lustrous, enduring metals we use throughout our collection: gold vermeil and .925 sterling silver. When selecting the gemstones that would embellish them, we returned to the texts: choosing color-shifting Rainbow Moonstone for Circe, a gem that transforms in different lights to honor her powers of transmutation. It’s also a stone associated with intuition, femininity, and (as the name suggests) the powers of the moon: fitting for a Sorceress of Circe’s skill.
For The Siren Pearl Drop Earring, a pearl was a natural choice: a gleaming, organic shape that comes into existence through friction, but has an enchanting result. White freshwater pearls were chosen to complement the gold vermeil colorway, and dark, iridescent Tahitian pearls for silver. Every detail in the design has meaning: the curve of the siren’s body appears almost as it would as a figurehead on a ship — a common nautical motif, paradoxically believed to ward off trouble at sea.
Athena also gets her due credit in this collection: one of our most beloved Goddesses, she is rendered anew as a powerful statement bracelet. A piece designed to guide your hand with her divine wisdom.
Frequently Asked Questions
Was Penelope really passive in the Odyssey?
| No. Penelope ran Ithaca alone for ten years, outmaneuvered more than a hundred suitors, and devised the shroud trick that stalled her remarriage for three full years before she was betrayed. The poem's ending also turns on a test she designs herself, using the immovable bed only she and Odysseus would know about, making her recognition scene as much her invention as his return. |
Was Circe a villain in Greek mythology?
| Yes and no. Circe transforms Odysseus's crew into pigs after they arrive uninvited on her island, then becomes his most reliable ally, giving him accurate, unprompted warnings about the dangers ahead, including the Sirens and the strait between Scylla and Charybdis. Her reputation as a temptress comes from later retellings more than from Homer's original text. |
What were the Sirens actually singing?
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The Odyssey never records their song's lyrics, only that it was dangerous enough to require binding Odysseus to his ship's mast while his crew's ears were sealed with wax. Later tradition suggests the Sirens offered total, unfiltered knowledge rather than simple seduction, which reframes the danger as the truth itself rather than the women singing it. |
Were there other women in the Odyssey?
| Yes. Athena serves as Odysseus's direct patron and problem-solver throughout the poem, Calypso offers him immortality and is refused, and Nausicaa's help is the reason he survives to tell his own story. Each carries real narrative weight that popular retellings compress far more than the original text does. |