Page 18 - GALIET ABSENCE AND Presence's Loom: Helen and Penelope IV

real, liberty and necessity, presence and absence: “whether to stay with Telemachus (me),/and tend his (my) house, respect her husband’s bed/and heed the people’s voice, or turn instead/to that Achaean suitor who is best/and offers most gifts, as her new mate.”17
Penelope’s tormenting quandary, remorseful Helen does not feel, yet both weave their great webs in the crepuscule of being: Penelope weaves and unweaves to prevent her hateful wedding to a lesser suitor, while Helen weaves to be proclaimed beloved wife of whom wins her: Prince Paris, or King Menelaus. Penelope weaves and unweaves to dwell in presence, escape absence, to preserve herself, and all things; Helen weaves to dwell in either Sparta or Troy, never clearly defining where her genuine presence or absence dwells.
Helen, thus, weaves only to commemorate her mythic presence in history; while Penelope weaves and unweaves in her perennial loom of nostalgia to commemorate her true being. For what was once her idyll and paradise, now decays 3⁄4 not due to her fall from grace 3⁄4 but to the suitors’ disgrace.
Thus, Penelope, unlike Helen, astutely quests for her genuine dwelling, her true presence near her Odysseus, and beloved Telemachus. Thus, she, too, dreams of her fair halls, liberty’s wings 3⁄4 just as winter dreams of yesterday’s verdant springs 3⁄4 far-off from necessity’s will. Thus, she astutely unweaves to deceive
17 Ody., 16.60-92. 319.
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