Dreaming, Vol. 8, No.

4, 1998

Penelope as Dreamer: A Reading of Book 19 of

The Odyssey
Kelly Bulkeley1,2

This essay reexamines the encounter between Odysseus and Penelope in Book 19 of Homer's
epic poem The Odyssey, focusing particular attention on the dream of the 20 geese Penelope
describes during that encounter. Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, says the dream is a favorable
omen which indicates the real Odysseus will return soon to rid his palace of the hated suitors
who have occupied it in his long absence. Although generations of scholars have agreed with
the hero's interpretation, the present essay offers a different understanding: Penelope, having
recognized who this "beggar" really is, has fabricated her dream of the 20 geese to test her
husband and determine whether he is more interested in renewing their marriage or
satisfying his vengeance against the suitors. The essay offers an appreciation of Penelope
as one of our earliest and wisest dreamers, who understood how easily people's wishes and
desires could lead them to misinterpret their own dreams and the dreams of others.

The encounter between Odysseus and Penelope in Book 19 of The Odyssey is

in many respects the point of greatest dramatic intensity in the entire poem. The
scene brings together these two proud, cunning, extremely wary people, testing and
probing each other's feelings and intentions. Odysseus, after leading the Achaean
army to victory against the Trojans and after enduring a seemingly endless series
of harrowing trials and adventures, has returned at last to his island home of Ithaca,
where he has found a mob of rude, arrogant princes and noblemen besieging his
palace. The crafty warrior has disguised himself as an old beggar in order to gain
entrance into the palace without being recognized, and he is plotting violent revenge
against the men who would steal his throne. Penelope, who for many years has
desperately clung to the hope that Odysseus would someday return to her, has
invited this strange wanderer into her private chambers to ask if he can tell her
any news of her husband. She tells the beggar that the pressures have been growing
on her to finally abandon hope of her husband's return and to choose a new hus-
band from among the many worthy suitors wooing her in the palace.
1The Graduate Theological Union at the University of California, Berkeley, California, USA.
2Correspondence should be directed to Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D., 226 Amherst Avenue, Kensington,
California 94708, USA.

229
1053-0797/98/1200-0229$15.00/1 c 1998 Association for the Study of Dreams
230 Bulkeley

At the heart of this scene is a dream—Penelope's dream of the twenty geese

that are suddenly slaughtered by a mountain eagle. Penelope shares her dream
with the beggar, and asks if he can interpret it for her. After he tells her what he
thinks it means, Penelope replies with a haunting speech about the two gates
through which dreams come—the gate of cleanly carved ivory, and the gate of pol-
ished horn. Of all the scholarly discussions of this scene between Penelope and the
disguised Odysseus, very few have focused on the relationship between Penelope's
dream of the twenty geese and the other dreams presented elsewhere in Homer's
poems.3 And of those few dream-oriented studies none has fully appreciated what
Penelope's dream reveals about her feelings and intentions as she talks with this
mysterious beggar. In this essay I will take a new look at Penelope's dream in Book
19, focusing on the unique qualities of this dream in comparison to other Homeric
dreams. I will try to re-imagine this scene not just from the perspective of Odysseus,
the valiant warrior-king who has finally returned home, but also from the perspec-
tive of Penelope, the noble queen who has been hoping that one day she will be
reunited with her husband.

II

The best way to appreciate the complex interplay of deception, disguise, and
duplicity between Odysseus and Penelope in this scene is to view it in the context
of the four major dream experiences reported by characters earlier in the narrative
world of The Iliad and The Odyssey. These other dream reports establish the horizon
of expectations that Penelope, Odysseus, and Homer's audience bring to the inti-
mate, fire-lit conversation between distraught Queen and aged beggar in Book 19.

Iliad 2.1-83: Agamemnon's "Evil Dream"

The Iliad opens with a bitter argument between Agamemnon, the leader of the
Achaean armies fighting against Troy, and Achilles, the greatest warrior in the Achaean
ranks. Agamemnon has just taken from Achilles a girl whom Achilles had won as a
prize in an earlier battle. Achilles is deeply angered by this unfair treatment, and he
prays to his mother, the goddess Thetis, for help in restoring his honor and punishing
Agamemnon. Thetis presses her son's claim before Zeus, and the mightiest of the
Olympian gods decides to send down an "Evil Dream" to Agamemnon, a dream in
which the trusted counselor Nestor appears to give him divine encouragement to lead
the Achaeans in a victorious assault on Troy. But the dream is actually setting

3 Among the major scholarly writings that have focused specifically on the subject of dreams in Homer
are E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951); George
Devereux, "The Character of Penelope," Psychoanalytic Quarterly 26 (1957): 378-386; A.V. Rankin,
"Penelope's Dreams in Books XIX and XX of the Odyssey," Hellkon 2 (1962): 617-624, Anne Amory;
"The Reunion of Odysseus and Penelope," in Essays on the Odyssey: Selected Modern Criticism (ed.
C.H. Taylor) (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1963) and "The Gates of Horn and Ivory,"
Yale Classical Studies 20 (1966): 3-57; R.G.A. Van Lieshout, Greeks on Dreams (Utrecht, The
Netherlands: HES Publishers, 1980); and J. Russo, "Interview and Aftermath: Dream, Fantasy, and
Intuition in Odyssey 19 and 20," American Journal of Philology 103 (1982): 4-18.
Penelope as Dreamer 231

Agamemnon up for a humiliating defeat, thus making plain to everyone how badly
the Achaeans need the help of the mighty Achilles.

Iliad 23.54-107: Achilles' Dream of Patroklos

The second major dream report in The Iliad comes near the end of the story, after
Patroklos, Achilles' closest friend, has been killed in battle. In this passage the spirit or
ghost of Patroklos appears to Achilles and pleads for speedier attention to his burial
rites. Achilles agrees to fulfill Patroklos' request, but when he mournfully tries to em-
brace his friend, Achilles' arms grasp only air, for "the spirit went underground, like
vapour, with a thin cry, and Achilles started awake." (23.100-101; Lattimore trans.)

Odyssey 4.884-946: Penelope's Reassuring Dream

Early in The Odyssey, Odysseus's son Telemachus, who was only an infant when
Odysseus left for Troy but now has grown to manhood, sets off on a voyage to see
what news he can find of his father. Telemachus leaves Ithaca secretly, without
telling his mother Penelope of his plans, for he knows that she will try to stop him
out of fear for his safety. When Penelope discovers that her son has embarked on
this dangerous voyage, and when she learns that the suitors are plotting to kill him
if he ever manages to return, she nearly goes mad with despair. But in Penelope's
sleep that night the goddess Athena sends a dream to her in the form of Penelope's
sister, and this dream reassures the Queen that her son is protected by the gods and
will return safely to Ithaca. Penelope is thankful for the dream's comforting proph-
ecy about Telemachus and, sensing that behind the dream image of her sister may
stand a god, she goes on to ask if she might be given comparable news about
Odysseus. Here Penelope is disappointed, for the dream figure tells her that noth-
ing can be foretold one way or the other about the fate of her husband.

Odyssey 6.15-79: Nausicaa's Marriage Dream

At this point in the story Odysseus has just washed ashore on an unknown
island after days of being tossed and beaten in the storm-swept seas, and he has
wearily crawled under some bushes at the mouth of a river to sleep. While he
sleeps, Athena is "full of plans" for his journey home. The goddess's challenge
at this point is to help the warrior move from his current position—naked, un-
armed, a stranger in a potentially hostile land—into the palace of the island's
King, where Odysseus can receive further help in his struggles to return to Ithaca.
The plan Athena comes up with is to send a dream to the King's daughter, Prin-
cess Nausicaa. In the dream Athena appears in the form of Nausicaa's best friend
and gently criticizes the young Princess, reminding her that the time for her mar-
riage is coming soon and that Nausicaa should go to the river to wash the family
linens in anticipation of her wedding day. Nausicaa wakes up and does as the
dream has prompted her, taking her handmaids and a cart loaded with fineries
to the river. When Odysseus steps out from the bushes, covered by nothing but
232 Bulkeley

a strategically-held olive branch, the handmaids all flee in terror, but Nausicaa
bravely stands her ground and agrees to aid the stranger in getting into the palace
and pleading his case before her parents.

Ill

These are the major dream experiences that, in the narrative world of Homer's two poems,
precede the meeting of Queen Penelope and the mysterious beggar in Book 19 of The. Odyssey.
Penelope has asked the beggar (as we are told she has asked all travelers who pass through
Ithaca4) to speak with her and share any news he might have about the fate of her husband
Odysseus. The beggar, whom we in the audience know is Odysseus in disguise, carefully crafts
a fanciiul story about his background, but he weaves into his story true details about Odysseus'
travels, appearance, and clothing. The beggar fervently promises Penelope that Odys-
seus is very close and will return very, very soon. Penelope says she wishes the beg-
gar's words would come true, but she doubts they will. Penelope then asks her old
servant woman, Eurycleia, to bathe the stranger and arrange a comfortable place
for him to sleep. The Queen steps away while the old nurse washes the beggar's
feet. Then, before parting for the night, Penelope returns to the beggar and says,
My friend, I have only one more question for you . . .
[PJlease, read this dream for me, won't you? Listen closely . . .
I kept twenty geese in the house, from the water trough
they come and peck their wheat—I love to watch them all.
But down from a mountain swooped this great hook-beaked eagle,
yes, and he snapped their necks and killed them one and all
and they lay in heaps throughout the halls while he,
back to the clear blue sky he soared at once.
But I wept and wailed—only a dream, of course—
and our well-groomed ladies came and clustered round me,
sobbing, stricken: the eagle killed my geese. But down
he swooped again and settling onto a jutting rafter
called out in a human voice that dried my tears,
'Courage, daughter of famous King Icarius!
This is no dream but a happy waking vision,
real as day, that will come true for you.
The geese were your suitors—I was once the eagle
but now I am your husband, back again at last,
about to launch a terrible fate against them all!'
So he vowed, and the soothing sleep released me.5
The disguised Odysseus immediately replies,
Dear woman, . . . twist it however you like,
your dream can mean only one thing. Odysseus
^Odyssey 14.142-151.
^Odyssey 19.575, 603-621. All direct translations from The Odyssey are from the translation of Robert
Fagles (New York: Viking, 1996).
Penelope as Dreamer 233

told him yourself—he'll make it come to pass.

Destruction is clear for each and every suitor;
not a soul escapes his death and doom.6
Penelope's response to the beggar is this:
'Ah my friend,' seasoned Penelope dissented,
'dreams are hard to unravel, wayward, drifting things—
not all we glimpse in them will come to pass . . .
Two gates there are for our evanescent dreams,
one is made of ivory, the other made of horn.
Those that pass through the ivory cleanly carved
are will-o'-the-wisps, their message bears no fruit.
The dreams that pass through the gates of polished horn
are fraught with truth, for the dreamer who can see them.
But I can't believe my strange dream has come that way,
much as my son and I would love to have it so.'7
The Queen then makes a surprising announcement: she says she has decided
the time has come for her to stop resisting the suitors. Penelope tells the beggar
that the very next morning she will hold a contest, in which the great bow of
Odysseus will be brought out of storage in the palace treasure room. Whoever
among the suitors is able to string the great bow and shoot an arrow straight
through a row of twelve battle axes, that man Penelope will take as her new
husband. With those as her final words, Queen Penelope bids good night to the
beggar and retires to her bedchamber to cry herself to sleep.
The interpretation of this scene given and endorsed by many classics scholars
is this.8 Odysseus has heroically controlled his desire to rejoin Penelope and hidden
his true identity from her for two reasons: one, to test his wife's fidelity during his
long absence, and two, to pick up information about how to destroy the hated suit-
6
Odyssey 19.624-629.
1
Odyssey 19.630-640.
8
Defenders of this basic line of interpretation include F. M. Combellack, "Three Odyssean Problems,"
California Studies in Classical Antiquity 6 (1973), 17-46; Bernard Fenik, Studies in the Odyssey. Hermes
Einzelschriften, no. 30 (Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, 1974); John H. Finley, Jr.,
Homer's Odyssey (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978); C. Emlyn-Jones, "The Reunion of
Odysseus and Penelope," Greece & Rome 31 (1984): 1-18; Sheila Murnaghan, Disguise and Recognition
in the Odyssey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); M. A. Katz, Penelope's Renown (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1991); R.B. Rutherford, Homer's Odyssey: Books XIX and XX (Cambridge,
England: Cambridge University Press, 1992); and Nancy Felson-Rubin, "Penelope's Perspective:
Character from Plot," in Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays (ed. Seth L. Schein) (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996). Katz has usefully summarized modern scholarly debate on this section
of The Odyssey into three groups. One group takes an "Analytic" approach, arguing that the combination
of at least two different story traditions in Book 19 is the cause of the narrative inconsistencies and
contradictions. Another group uses an "Aesthetic" perspective to explain that the importance of plot
structure made it inevitable that plausible character development in Book 19 (particularly regarding
Penelope's character) would suffer as a by-product. The third group draws on "Psychological" thinking
to seek deeper motivations in the characters that would help to account for otherwise problematic or
inexplicable events in Book 19. My approach in this essay is, in Katz's categorization, psychological.
However, I come to very different conclusions from those offered by the other primary exponents of
the psychological view (e.g., Harsh, Amory, Russo), and I thereby avoid the biggest problems that
critics have identified in their treatments of this scene.
234 Bnlkeley

ors. Penelope's dream of the 20 geese is a straightforward prophecy, whose true

meaning the disguised Odysseus instantly recognizes. But Penelope, who has shown
a stubborn skepticism throughout the story, refuses to accept the dream's obvious
meaning. Her "two gates" speech only adds to the picture of Penelope as a forlorn
victim of fate, no longer capable of feeling hope even when presented with an ob-
vious prophecy, even when her savior is literally standing right in front of her. The
pathetic ignorance and helplessness of Penelope's condition is further demonstrated
by her sudden decision to hold the contest of the bow, a decision that for Penelope
is a surrender, a final capitulation to the pressures to remarry, but that for the
disguised Odysseus is an unintended gift, presenting a perfect opportunity for the
great warrior to slaughter the suitors and reclaim his honor.
In recent years a new twist has been added to this interpretation of the scene
between Penelope and the disguised Odysseus.9 Drawing on psychoanalytic theory,
some scholars have pointed to a particular detail of Penelope's dream—the fact
that she "loved to watch" the geese, and then weeps when they are killed—as evi-
dence that Penelope feels an unconscious affection for the suitors. Although earlier
in the poem she repeatedly states her loathing for the suitors, Penelope's dream
reveals that unconsciously she enjoys their amorous attentions and would be upset
if they were taken away from her. In this reading, Penelope not only fails to rec-
ognize Odysseus, she fails to recognize her own true feelings.
My dissatisfaction with this widely held interpretation of the scene between
Penelope and Odysseus begins with its strange depreciation of Penelope's intelli-
gence. This is a woman whom several characters have praised for her unrivaled
perceptiveness, cunning, and guile.10 This is the woman who devised the famous
ruse of the funeral shroud, by which she successfully deceived the suitors for three
years, telling them she would marry one of them as soon as she finished weaving
a funeral shroud for Odysseus' father, but each night secretly returning to the loom
to unravel the day's work. All of the evidence of the poem points to the fact that
Penelope is no fool; she is intelligent, resourceful, extremely perceptive, and capable
of magnificently subtle deceptions. And yet many scholars ask us to forget all that
when we come to Book 19, and suddenly to regard Penelope as weak, ignorant,
and victimized, a pathetically unwitting contributor to Odysseus' master plan for
vengeance.
A handful of scholars have felt a similar dissatisfaction with this view. Using psy-
choanalytic theory toward a different end, they have suggested that Penelope actually
has a half-formed, intuitive awareness that the beggar may indeed be her husband.11

9
See in particular Devereux, Dodds, and Finley.
10
E.g., the suitor Antinous calls Penelope "the matchless queen of cunning" (2.95), and the shade of
Agamemnon says that, unlike his wife Clytemnestra, Odysseus's wife will not be unfaithful to him;
"she's much too steady, her feelings run too deep, Icarius' daughter Penelope, that wise woman"
(11.504-505).
1]
P.W. Harsh, "Penelope and Odysseus in Odyssey XIX," American Journal of Philology 71 (1950), 1-21;
Amory, Reunion; Douglas J. Stewart, The Disguised Guest: Rank, Role, and Identity in the Odyssey
(Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1976); Norman Austin, Archery at the Dark of the Moon: Poetic
Problems in Homer's Odyssey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); J.J. Winkler, The Con-
straints of Desire (New York, 1990).
Penelope as Dreamer 235

These scholars point to the comments by both Penelope and Eurycleia earlier
in Book 19 about how the beggar bears an uncanny physical resemblance to Odys-
seus; they point to the increasing intimacy of the conversation between Penelope
and the beggar; and, they point to Penelope's verbal slip in almost calling the beggar
"Odysseus."12
These scholars focus particular attention on Penelope's dream of the 20 geese,
which they take as demonstrating a kind of veiled recognition of the true identity
of the beggar. Penelope may not consciously know who the beggar is, but at an
unconscious level, in her dream of the 20 geese, she intuitively senses that he may
be Odysseus.
This alternative reading of the scene, while drawing attention to another mean-
ing of Penelope's dream, still does not provide an adequate understanding of the
encounter between Penelope and the disguised Odysseus. My proposal is to ap-
proach the scene by comparing Penelope's dream of the 20 geese with the other
dream experiences reported in Homer's two poems. If we follow this approach, two
distinctive features of Penelope's dream emerge immediately:
1) This is the only dream that occurs "offstage," out of direct view of the
audience. We do not see the dream while it is happening; we only hear the dreamer
describe it, after the fact.
2) This is the only "symbolic" dream, with its meaning encoded in imagery
rather than stated directly in message form. The dream thus poses a riddle, which
hiust be accurately interpreted for the true meaning to emerge.
I believe these two details suggest a very different reading of the scene. Could
it be that this is not a "real" dream at all, that in fact Penelope has made it up?
Could it be that Penelope is deliberately, and cunningly, using the riddle of her
dream as a test to find out the intentions of this man, whom she consciously suspects
is Odysseus? Could it be that while he thinks he's deceiving her, she in fact is the
one deceiving him?
At the very least, this possibility cannot be dismissed out of hand. The fact
that we in the audience do not see the dream while it is happening prevents us
from validating it as a real dream (that is, assigning it an ontological status equal
to the other dreams experienced and reported in the two poems). More signifi-
cantly, we in the audience already know of two dreams that have been used to
deceive and manipulate others: Zeus sending the "Evil Dream" to Agamemnon,
and Athena sending the "marriage" dream to Nausicaa. Indeed, we have already
witnessed one character fabricating a dream in order to manipulate another char-
acter—at the end of Book 14, when the disguised Odysseus makes up a story about
the "real" Odysseus making up a dream in order to steal another warrior's cloak
on a cold, windy night.13

12
Up with you now, my good old Eurycleia,
come and wash your master's . . . equal in years.
Odysseus must have feet and hands like his by now—
hardship can age a person overnight.' (The Odyssey 19.406-409)
l3
The Odyssey 14.519-589.
236 Bulkeley

Taken together, these examples provide a good textual justification for follow-
ing my admittedly unorthodox approach to Penelope's dream of the 20 geese.
The question may be fairly asked: when does Penelope make up the dream?
At what point exactly does she decide to do this? I believe she does so during
the interlude when the old nurse Eurycleia is washing the beggar's feet.14
It is reasonable to assume that while Penelope is alone for these few moments,
waiting for Eurycleia to finish with the beggar, she is pondering the conversation
she has been having with the beggar.15 Here is a man who has detailed and in-
timate knowledge about Odysseus, who looks and sounds exactly like Odysseus,
who insists with passionate certainty that Odysseus will return to the palace the
very next day, and who says Odysseus is not sure whether he will come back
openly or in disguise. The question could hardly not arise for this most intelligent
and perceptive of women: is this stranger Odysseus himself, returned and yet dis-
guised? If we take Penelope's point of view in this scene, and if we acknowledge
her exemplary intelligence, we may well imagine that she strongly suspects, and
perhaps has concluded with certainty, who this beggar truly is. A painful ques-
tion would then immediately present itself to her: why isn't he revealing him-
self? Penelope has just poured out her heart to him, saying how terribly she
has suffered over the years, fending off the suitors, waiting for him to come
back—and still he refuses to drop the disguise and comfort her? Why is he
prolonging her suffering, when he could end it this very moment?
The answer to this question would, I believe, present itself to her just as im-
mediately: Odysseus must doubt her fidelity to him, and must care more about how
the suitors have dishonored him than about how his wife has suffered. He must
think it possible that Penelope has behaved like Clytemnestra and Helen, two other
weak, faithless women who, as we're told repeatedly in Homer's poems, surrendered
to their lust, took new lovers, and thereby dishonored their rightful husbands. But
Penelope has not been unfaithful to Odysseus. On the contrary, she has remained
true to him despite their long separation and despite the urgent pressure of the
suitors and her own family to take a new husband. Penelope has been faithful to
Odysseus—and yet he still stands apart from her, pretending to be someone else,
scheming to revenge himself on the suitors.

14
It is important to note that the "intuitionist" view of this scene cannot give a good answer to the
question of when Penelope had her dream of the 20 geese. Between the time that Penelope first sees
the beggar and their conversation in her private chamber, no night intervenes in which her unconscious
mind could have expressed via the dream its intuition about his true identity. Finley, in arguing against
the intuitionist view, seizes on this detail to support his "aesthetic" view that characterization follows
plot development: "[W]hen could she have had the dream that expresses this anguish between doubt
and hope? . . . . But the question is meaningless. The poet clearly bent his full resources, of night
and dream especially, to the great scene...One again sees the story dictating words and emotions, not
the reverse." (27) However, in my reading of the scene this detail is perfectly consistent with the idea
that Penelope did not "dream" this dream at all, but rather made it up after she met the beggar.
15
At this point in the story the audience's attention is focused on the conversation between Odysseus
and Eurycleia, and the old nurse's discovery of the scar on his leg, revealing to her his true identity.
The text says that Eurycleia tries to signal her discovery to Penelope, "but she [Penelope] could not
catch the glance, she took no heed, Athena turned her attention elsewhere" (19.541-542).
Penelope as Dreamer 237

When Eurycleia finishes washing the beggar's feet, Penelope returns to him
and asks her one last question, about what her dream might mean. Following
my approach of imagining that Penelope consciously suspects that the beggar is
in fact Odysseus, I believe Penelope has invented this dream as a means of testing
him. The key to her dream test is the symbol of the 20 geese. In the dream's
second part, the mountain eagle interprets the geese as symbolizing the suitors,
who have taken up residence in the palace and behaved like animals in their
riotous feasting. After hearing Penelope describe her dream the beggar eagerly
agrees with the mountain eagle's words: "destruction is clear for each and every
suitor."
Penelope, however, disagrees. In the context of their conversation, Penelope's
"two gates" speech is a subtle but unmistakable way of saying, "I don't think so"
to the beggar's interpretation. She cannot agree with him for a simple reason: the
mountain eagle and the beggar have both misinterpreted the dream. There are 20
geese in her dream, but more, many more than that number of suitors in the palace.
As we learn in Book 16.270-288, where Telemachus tells Odysseus who all the suit-
ors are and where they come from, there are a total of 108 men besieging the
palace. Penelope's refusal to accept the interpretation of the mountain eagle and
the beggar is not due to stubborn skepticism or pathetic ignorance—she rejects the
interpretation because it is wrong.
The true meaning of the symbol of the 20 geese is surprisingly easy to find
if we do not automatically assume that the mountain eagle and the beggar are
right (that is, if we do not automatically privilege the narrative perspective of Odys-
seus). The 20 geese symbolize the 20 years that Penelope and Odysseus have been
apart from each other, the 20 years that Odysseus has been away fighting the war
at Troy and journeying through the world. The exact length of Odysseus' absence,
20 years, is mentioned five separate times in the poem, and the beggar himself
comments to Penelope a few lines earlier that Odysseus has been gone for 20
years.16
Thus, the first part of her dream symbolically, and very accurately, describes
Penelope's emotional experience of what has happened between them: Odysseus,
by going off to fight in someone else's war, has destroyed the last 20 years for her.
What should have been the prime years of their marriage, the wonderful years of
living together and raising a family, the years that Penelope would have "loved to
watch" and care for, have been slaughtered by Odysseus.17

16
The 20 years that Odysseus has been gone from Penelope is mentioned at 2.196,13.102,16.235,19.256,
and 19.547.
17
There is no scholarly consensus about what is meant by Penelope's mention at the end of her dream
that when she awoke she saw the "real" geese in the house eating as usual at their trough (see Fel-
son-Rubin, p. 177). In other narrative contexts such a detail is often used to diminish the veracity of
the given dream - as if the dreamer were saying, "But then I woke up and recognized the external
cause that provoked the dream's illusory images." In the case of Penelope's dream, however, I believe
this reference to an external stimulus of the dream's imagery actually reinforces its meaning (i.e., its
interpretive challenge to the disguised Odysseus): Penelope's concluding mention of the "real" geese
emphasizes her deep emotional concern with the home that she once shared, and hopes to share
again, with her husband.
238 Bulkeley

The second part of the dream expresses Penelope's fearful perception of

Odysseus right now, still standing apart from her in the disguise of a beggar.
He doesn't see her true feelings, what the last 20 years have been like for her;
all he can see are the suitors, and an outrageous challenge to his honor. By
posing this dream, this riddle, this test to the beggar, Penelope is in effect asking
if her suspicion is true: is the "real" Odysseus as blind to her feelings and as ob-
sessed with killing the suitors as is the "dream" Odysseus? When the beggar agrees
with the mountain eagle's words in the dream, Penelope knows the unfortunate
answer.
Perhaps Penelope does harbor an unconscious attraction toward the suitors,
as some scholars have argued.18 But whether or not that is true, her dream of the
20 geese does not provide evidence for such an attraction. She "loves" to watch
the geese because they symbolize the joyful, prosperous domestic life she antici-
pated so many years ago when she married Odysseus and bore their son; she tear-
fully mourns their death because that life has been taken away from her. Even
though Odysseus may have returned—and this is the key point—even though he
may be back, those 20 years are gone forever, and Penelope weeps for their loss.
The mysterious poetry of Penelope's two gates speech becomes all the
more powerful when it is understood as a response to Odysseus's failure of the
dream interpretation test. To his reprimanding words, "twist it however you
like, your dream can only mean one thing," Penelope gently dissents. Dreams
are always difficult to understand, she says, and they do not always come true.
The danger is that we will allow our desire to cloud our perception—taking
as divine prophecy what is merely human fantasy. But some dreams, she goes
on to say, do have the potential to come true—though only "for the dreamer
who can see them." That is precisely what Odysseus has failed to do. He
has failed to see past his own desire for revenge, and to see the true meaning
of Penelope's dream of the 20 geese. Penelope and her son Telemachos,
whose childhood never included his father, "would love to have it so," would
love to have back those 20 years with Odysseus. But that is a wish that can
never come true.
Penelope's sudden decision, immediately after this conversation about her
dream, to hold the contest of the bow is seen by many interpreters of Homer to
be the height of pathetic irony.19 It seems the forlorn Queen has finally surrendered
all hope of Odysseus's return—although we in the audience know that in fact her
ultimate salvation is imminent. Fortunately for her, Odysseus can make use of his

18
Her strangely motivated appearance before the suitors in Book 18 is perhaps the best evidence of
such an unconscious attraction.
19
For discussions of the bow contest, and Penelope's motivation in announcing it, see Denys Page, The
Homeric Odyssey (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1955); Combellack, Fenik, Stewart, T. Van
Nortwick, "Penelope as Double Agent," Classical World 77 (1983): 24-25; and Helene P. Foley,
"Penelope as Moral Agent," in The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer's Odyssey (ed. Beth
Cohen) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Penelope as Dreamer 239

wife's foolish decision to hold the contest of the bow as a means of furthering his
plans for killing the suitors. Penelope may have given in at last, but her weakness
is transformed by her husband Odysseus into the means of her rescue.
I find this line of interpretation very hard to follow. How can we view Penelope's
decision as an aid to the cause of restoring Odysseus's honor? Despite his initial
show of enthusiasm at the end of Book 19 (later belied by his anxious thoughts
while lying awake in bed that night), there are many reasons to believe that
Penelope's call for the contest of the bow has actually made things much more dif-
ficult for Odysseus. It is not too hard to imagine what Odysseus's own plan would
be for defeating the suitors. He would wait until after a particularly boisterous, wine-
sodden party had ended and then, under cover of dark and with the help of Tele-
machus, he would slit the suitors' throats as they slept. Of all the warriors in Homer's
epics, Odysseus is distinguished by his frequent use of the night ambush as a battle
tactic (most famously with his ploy of the Trojan Horse and with his escape from
the Cyclops Polyphemus). Destroying the suitors in this fashion would likely appear
as the surest and simplest course of action; all Odysseus had to do was wait patiently
for the opportunity, and then strike.
But Penelope's abrupt decision to hold the contest of the bow changes
everything. Now there is time pressure on Odysseus; he cannot wait for his op-
portunity, but must be ready to act the very next morning. Now the suitors will
all be awake and alert; Odysseus cannot take advantage of their inebriated slum-
ber. Even worse, the public contest creates the possibility that one of the suitors
might actually string the bow, and thus legitimately challenge Odysseus's claim
to Penelope. Worst of all is the possibility that Odysseus himself might fail to
string the bow. Is he still strong enough to string the bow? What would happen
if he couldn't? Would he still have a legitimate claim to the throne of Ithaca?
Scholars have long marveled at the apparent whimsy of Penelope's announcement
of the contest of the bow, but in my reading her decision is a very deliberate, if
terribly mournful, ploy to compel Odysseus to reestablish his worthiness as her hus-
band.21
The Odysseus she married more than 20 years ago could string this great bow.
By posing this contest, Penelope is forcing Odysseus to prove that he should be
her husband again, to prove that he is as good now as the man who left her so
many years ago. If he has been testing her fidelity to him, prolonging her suffering
for the sake of fully restoring his honor, then she is going to test his worthiness of

20
Another example of Odysseus using the cover of night to kill his enemies in their slumber is the
episode in Book 10 of The Iliad when he and Diomedes sneak into the Trojan camp at night and
quietly slaughter several sleeping warriors.
2I
In this I agree with those scholars (e.g., Felson-Rubin) who view the contest of the bow as part of a
"courtship pattern" found in other narratives. But in my view the contest is a deliberate action on
Penelope's part to have a second courtship with Odysseus, and not an unintentional consequence of
her "surrender," as other scholars have suggested.
240 Bulkeley

her, making his challenge harder for the sake of assuring the integrity and strength
of their reunion.22

IV

Let me close with some comments about what Penelope has to teach us
about the nature of dreams and dreaming. First of all, she shows us how fright-
eningly easy it is to misinterpret the dreams of other people, especially when
their dreams seem to confirm our own hopes, desires, and wishes. Just as Odys-
seus misinterprets Penelope's dream of the 20 geese because of his urgent desire
to destroy the suitors, so many scholars have also misinterpreted her dream be-
cause of their apparent desire to sustain a time-honored image of Odysseus as
the supreme hero of the ancient world, invulnerable and indomitable, the abso-
lute master of his emotions. Penelope's story highlights a crucial point about
dream interpretation that has, in fact, been central in the history of Western
culture's understanding of dreams.23 From Jeremiah's warning about false proph-
ets who mislead the people with their claims "I have dreamed, I have dreamed!"
to Freud's belated discovery of counter-transference in psychoanalytic therapy,
Westerners have long recognized that the danger of wishfully misinterpreting a
dream should never be underestimated.
A second insight we may gain from Penelope emerges from a close reading
of her two gates speech. This speech is often read as a primitive and simplistic
division of dreams into two different types, the true and the false. As I hope to
have shown by studying this speech in its full context, Penelope is in fact saying

22
The final dream episode of The Odyssey, at the beginning of book 20, follows naturally from this
desperate interplay of disguise and deception. After Penelope retires to her bed chamber for the night,
Odysseus lays down on some sheepskins in the darkened palace and anxiously thinks about the daunting
prospect of facing all the suitors in the morning, "one man facing a mob" (20.33). Athena, his divine
patroness, finally appears to reassure Odysseus with promises of help in the next morning's battle,
and "showers sleep on his eyes." Just at that moment, in her bed chamber, Penelope awakens and
cries out in sadness that "wicked spirits" have tormented her again by sending a dream in which
someone lay beside her, "like Odysseus to the life, when he embarked with his men-at-arms" (20.99-100,
Fagles trans.). Again, this brief dream passage has elicited perplexity among scholars, who wonder
why a vivid, realistic dream of her husband would be cause for such feelings of despair and frustration.
Why isn't Penelope happy about this dream image? Isn't this exactly what she desires? This would
seem to be still further evidence of her stubborn skepticism. But Penelope specifically says the dream
portrays Odysseus as he was "when he embarked with his men-at-arms" - that is, when he left Ithaca
20 years ago, leading his troops on their ships to the battle at Troy. Penelope is frustrated by the
dream precisely because it is a vision of what she desires; the dream is a vain fantasy, a dream from
the gate of ivory. It is a dream that cannot come true and that can only remind her of what is gone
forever. The scene now shifts back to Odysseus lying asleep in the palace hallway, where he is suddenly
awakened by the sound of Penelope's cry. Hovering between sleep and wakefulness, Odysseus has a
sudden vision or daydream image of Penelope standing right next to him, recognizing who he truly is
(20.103-105). His dream, I suggest, is a true dream, a dream from the gate of horn: Penelope does
indeed know who he is, and once he has won the contest of the bow and destroyed the suitors they
will at last stand together, all disguises and deceptions put aside for good, wife and husband, Queen
and King, reunited at last.
23
For further discussion of the history of Western approaches to the interpretation of dreams, see Kelly
Bulkeley, Spiritual Dreaming: A Cross-Cultural and Historical Journey (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1995).
Penelope as Dreamer 241

something much more subtle and interesting about the nature of dreams. All
dreams, she suggests, are "hard to unravel, wayward, drifting things," and they
do not always predict what will happen in the future. The distinction Penelope
makes, however, is not simply that some dreams are true and others are false.
Rather, she is saying that some dreams may come true "for the dreamer who
can see them," for the dreamer who has the perceptiveness, intelligence, and
emotional self-awareness to recognize their meanings and act accordingly. Using
a slightly different metaphor, I suggest that the distinction Penelope is making
is between barren dreams and fruitful dreams, and the difference lies not so much
in the dreams themselves as in the dreamer's response to the dreams, in what
the dreamer does to cultivate the desires revealed by the dream and bring them
to fruition in the waking world.
Third and finally, Penelope's story reveals the powerful role that dreaming and
dream interpretation play in the process of mourning.24 All three of her dreams
(or, in my reading, her two real dreams and one fabricated dream) revolve around
the experience of loss and the attendant emotions of sadness, despair, and loneli-
ness. In and through her dreams Penelope confronts those losses, rather than de-
nying them or wishing them away. It is precisely her courageous determination to
face the painful past that enables her to create a new future for herself and Odys-
seus. In an important sense the whole of The Odyssey is a story about the danger
of losing one's memory, the danger of forgetting one's home and loved ones. Odys-
seus may have returned, and he may have defeated the suitors; but Penelope wants
him to remember the intimate bond that the two of them shared together. Only
by remembering, and mourning what has been lost, can they create a future for
themselves.25
This alternative reading of Book 19 of The Odyssey ultimately leads to
an appreciation of Penelope as one of our earliest and wisest dreamers. Before
Freud and Jung, before Macrobius and Artemidorus, before Joseph and Daniel,
Penelope understood the power and the danger of dreaming. She understood
how dreams arouse our desires, how dreams mourn our losses, how dreams de-
ceive us with captivating images of our wishes, how dreams look hopefully to-
ward the future, how dreams provoke us to creative action, and how the greatest

24
My understanding of the process of mourning has been most influenced by the work of Peter Romans,
particularly in The Ability to Mourn: Disillusionment and the Social Origins of Psychoanalysis (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1989).
^In his Introduction to Fagles's translation of The Odyssey, Bernard Knox argues that the bed test in
Book 23 is the "immovable obstacle" to the intuitionist view that Penelope has at some level recognized
who the beggar really is (p. 55). Although I have emphasized how my approach differs from other
intuitionist readings of The Odyssey, I appreciate the legitimacy of Knox's concern. In my reading
Penelope feels compelled to pose the bed test because Odysseus still has not returned to her. Yes, he
has slaughtered the suitors, reclaimed his palace and throne, and restored his honor. But Penelope
clearly wants him to remember what they, and only they, shared together. Her test regarding their
marriage bed is the last in a series of tests she must use to compel Odysseus to prove who he really
is - her husband. Combellack brings up two further objections that he believes are "fatal" to the
242 Bulkeley

human happiness comes from joining with another in the shared dreaming we
call love.

intuitionist view of Book 19: Homer did not mean for us to believe that Penelope knows who the
beggar is, and early in Book 20 Penelope wishes the gods would "shoot me dead," a suicidal thought
incompatible with the notion that she knows her husband has returned. To Combellack's second ob-
jection I agree that the beginning of Book 20 marks Penelope's emotional nadir: Odysseus has failed
her dream interpretation test, her own "tormenting" dream (a real one this time) has reminded her
of her vain fantasies of what she has lost, and the bow contest she has called for the next morning
has every chance of ending in disaster. It would indeed be surprising if Penelope actually did kill
herself at this point; but it is not surprising (and not inconsistent with my reading) that such a de-
spairing thought would occur to her at this point in the story. To Combellack's first objection, I do
not know what good can come of debating what Homer "meant" to say. The questions of who com-
posed The Odyssey and where its various narrative elements originated have no simple, obvious answers.
The reading I have offered is, I believe, thoroughly consistent with the unfolding of the plot of The
Odyssey and with the characterization of Penelope and Odysseus. More importantly, my reading pro-
vides better explanations than other scholars have provided for certain "problems" in Books 19 and
20 (e.g., the symbolism of the 20 geese, the two gates speech, the decision to hold the contest of the
bow, Penelope's dream in Book 20). My reading appears to deviate from what Homer "really meant"
only if Homer's perspective is assumed to be identical with that of Odysseus - an assumption that in
my view has led many scholars to misunderstand fundamentally the encounter between Penelope and
Odysseus in Book 19.