manticoreimaginary: favourite faces for favourite mythic ladies: Penelope with Kelly MacDonald None

manticoreimaginary:

favourite faces for favourite mythic ladies:Penelopewith Kelly MacDonald

None of them speak of Penelope’s cleverness. That is a term reserved for her husband, her Odysseus: so wily, so slippery, so deft with words that he’d spun her into loving him before she’d even realised it. But the two of them are more alike than others see.

Suitors fill her castle day and night, eating her food and harassing her servant girls, waiting and watching the unguarded queen with hunger. And each night she picks apart the work on her loom and imagines different ways to remove each and every disgusting one of them from her home. Twenty years is a long time and she worries that she’s forgotten Odysseus’ face.

But when he returns, Penelope knows him even through his disguise. The two of them have always worn masks and costumes in company, taking them off only in the privacy of their bedchamber. No one knows Odysseus like she does. No one can read such things as Penelope can. She sees through his mask and she holds out the bow.

It is not a test for me, my love, but a test for you.