Penelope's Odyssey

Penelope stands by her man, her husband Odysseus, and weaves by day and unravels by night to ward off the suitors vying for her hand. In Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, Penelope agrees to remarry when she finishes the shroud for her husband’s father Laertes. This painting depicts Penelope pulling out her stitches in the cover of darkness to avoid remarriage and to stay loyal to her husband. An angel assists her by holding a torch for lighting. After many trials and a stint in the underworld, her husband returns to her. I don’t know how to weave on a loom, and I couldn’t achieve a straight seam with a sewing machine in my middle school Home Economics class. But I would sew on a piece of cloth and rip out the stitches on a continual basis if it would bring my daughter Alix back from the afterlife.