You began the conversation with the observation that Homer describes how “Penelope felt her knees go slack, her heart surrender” (23.231), and how Penelope tells her husband, “’You’ve conquered my heart’” (23.258). You noted that the words “surrender” and “conquer” connote how protected Penelope keeps her heart, as if it were locked inside a fortress. She surrenders to the “raider of cities,” who conquers her heart. Penelope’s ultimate test of this stranger claiming to be her husband centers on the bed Odysseus built his house around.
You connected the bed to Penelope through Odysseus’s question, “’Does the bed…still stand planted firm’” (23.227). You astutely argued that the bed stands for Penelope in this case, and that Odysseus really is asking her about her own loyalty. You connected this image of the rooted bed to the many instances in which Homer and his characters testify to Penelope’s steadfast loyalty. Like the bed cannot be moved by another man, Penelope is rooted and cannot be pried from her love of Odysseus. You also talked about how the bed is made from an olive tree (23.219), a symbol of peace and prosperity, and an emblem of Athena. Around this bed, growing organically from Ithacan soil, this rock solid relationship, Odysseus built his house.
One comment you did not pursue, which I thought you might have, was a critique of how Odysseus speaks about the bed: “Around it I built my bedroom” (23.215). The pronouns are singular. Though he refers to the actual work of construction, in which Penelope played no part, if the bed represents their solid relationship, why does he take all the credit? He built only the literal bed; the metaphorical bed would wither and die without her strength and loyalty.
Ultimately, there reunion is sweet, though, and Athena even “held back the night,” so that they had more time together, enough time to Odysseus to tell his tale and for them to enjoy “delight in sleep” (23.353). Homer compares the joy Odysseus feels to the joy a shipwrecked sailor feels upon making landfall. Penelope here, once again, is the rock solid land (we can talk later about the sexism involved in the woman being immobilized while the man freely travels the waves). You also noted that Homer’s syntax through the epic simile—the long series of clauses, rising and falling like waves, and taking a long time to come to rest at a period—echoes the experience of the shipwrecked sailor.
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Your comment on the syntax of the sailor simile was interesting. I can see the connection between the clauses and waves, but there might be another possibility as to why Homer chooses not to just END the sentence. When a drowning sailor is striving for land, he puts all of his earthly energies into reaching that land, with no pause for thought. His entire being focuses on getting to land. When Penelope realizes that Odysseus is real, her burst of emotions must be expressed, with no pause for thought or breath (making that simile difficult to read for those of us with untrained lungs, anyway). In this way, Penelope's emotions can be likened to a sailor striving for land.
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