Seeking Penelope in Ophelia & Hamlet: Hamlet & The Odyssey - Part 3

In The Odyssey, the weaving of Penelope, as a ruse to avoid her 108 suitors* later seems to find parallels not only in Ophelia and her sewing and reading, but also in Prince Hamlet. (Penelope and others fending off 108 suitors makes me think of the Buddhist idea of the importance of quieting the "monkey mind" of distractions!)

Katherine Goodland has noted: Polonius wants Ophelia reading, to look like common images of Mary at the Annunciation. (See this post.) [1]

So now we have to think loosely, of Ophelia as associated in her sewing with Penelope,
and in her reading, with Mary at the Annunciation;
In a way, we might consider Penelope's weaving as a kind of compromised involvement with the world (to fend off suitors) and then a kind of prayer or repenting (unweaving, undoing the work), but also a kind of scheming for survival.

Hamlet and Ophelia both have rhythms of compromised involvement in their world, followed by types of repenting or undoing:

They weave love, but Ophelia's father requires that she undo it.

Ophelia regrets turning Hamlet away like the baker's daughter (4.5) in the tale who was ungenerous with the beggar at the door;

Hamlet regrets killing Polonius and being harsh with Laertes at Ophelia's grave, and he tries to apologize before the duel (5.2), without confessing publicly that Claudius was his true target. Regrets and apologies strive to undo harm.

Penelope's weaving was a deception: She wove during the day, and the undid her weaving at night. She had told her suitors that before she could accept a new husband, she had to finish weaving the burial shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes. The longer she draws out the weaving, the more she can delay the suitors.

Ophelia reading was also a deception, a conspiracy by her father, to use her as bait for Polonius and Claudius to spy on the conversation between Hamlet and Ophelia. There is a similar weaving-and-unweaving rhythm:

They greet one another kindly (weaving);

she returns his love letters (unweaving);
he says he never gave them (unweaving);

she says, "you know right well you did,
And with them words of so sweet breath compos'd
As made the things more rich." (weaving);

She continues, "Their perfume lost,
Take these again; for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind." (unweaving)

They continue:

HAMLET: Ha, ha! Are you honest?

OPHELIA: My lord?

HAMLET: Are you fair?

OPHELIA: What means your lordship?

HAMLET: That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.(unweaving)

OPHELIA: Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?" (weaving)

HAMLET: Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. (unweaving)
I did love you once. (weaving)

OPHELIA: Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. (weaving)

HAMLET: You should not have believ'd me; for virtue cannot so
inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not. (unweaving)

OPHELIA: I was the more deceived. (unweaving)

HAMLET: Get thee to a nunnery! Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? ... (unweaving)

Hamlet fears that Ophelia may share his father's fate in purgatory, and that she may also tempt him to sin and the same fate.

So is his warning to her simply misogyny, or also love?

There follows a confession by Hamlet of his various sins, which on the one hand seems intended to undo (unweave) their relationship, but it also seems intended to convey his deep concern for her and for her safety and eternal salvation:

HAMLET: Why wouldst thou be a breeder of
sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse
me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.
I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my
beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give
them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I
do, crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all;
believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.

He then condemns her (and all women) for "painted" faces, and for making monsters of men, as if he is frightened by the way he is aroused by her beauty, frightened that it may lead him to sin and hell or purgatory like his father's ghost. This pushes her away further, unweaving their relationship.

But in a sad and twisted way, is it motivated in part by love?

NOTES:
[1] https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2021/12/neglected-religious-and-political.html

[2] 3. In a review in  Shakespeare Studies Vol. 41 (2013)
of Susan Frye's "Pens and Needles..,"
reviewer Roze Hentschell observes that Frye connects Ophelia sewing and reading-
and also Virgilia sewing in Coriolanus -
with Penelope:

https://www.proquest.com/openview/bb76c53c1e4baacbb611a99720a99e78/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=29916

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It occurred to me that, instead of looking for sources that addressed the names of (young) Laertes in Hamlet and (old) Laertes in The Odyssey, it might be better to look for Shakespeare's connections to Penelope.

After a little searching, I found a few additional connections (#2 above, and others below):

3. The sentinels in Hamlet try to throw their weapons at the ghost, but they find it like the air, "invulnerable." The Wikipedia entry for Anticlea of Ithaca (mother of Ulysses/Odysseus) tells of how he sees his mother in the underworld:

"Odysseus attempts to embrace his mother three times but discovers that she is incorporeal, and his arms simply pass through her. She explains that this is how all ghosts are, and he expresses great sorrow." (accessed 6 August, 2022)

This detail correlates with Hamlet: It may not have been the source of this detail, but it could have been among sources contributing to this point.

I am grateful to Zahra Hasan for bringing Anticlea to my attention. Zahra also notes Ophelia and Anticlea in grief, dying, before Hamlet and Ulysses return from sea. Good points.

[4] In a 1938 "Everyman's Guide" to Hamlet by A.N. Parasuram, there is a note that connects the gibbering ghosts with Penelope's suitors:

"Another point of interest in these lines is the descrip-
tion of the spirits of the dead as ‘squeaking and gibbering
in the Roman streets.’ According to classical beliefs,
ghosts had a shrill, high-pitched voice. Mr Venty-cites
a line from the Odyssey which speaks of the spirits of
Penelope’s suitors as gibbering like bats

from archive.org via the Digital Library of India, reprinted in 1949,
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.219899/page/n1/mode/2up

[5] For a good essay on Penelope's weaving as a great strategy of thinking, reflection, and in that way, interiority, see "Penelope: The Odyssey’s Creative Thinker,"
Fall 2016, by Michael Grenke for "The College", a publication of St. John's College.
https://www.sjc.edu/news/penelope-odysseys-creative-thinker

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IMAGES:
LEFT: Note the triad that resembles Ophelia, Polonius, and Laertes: But in fact this is "Penelope, Laertes and Telemachus." Unknown author. Français : Pénélope avec son beau-père Laërte et son fils Télémaque. Miniature extraite des Héroïdes d'Ovide, traduction d'Octavien de Saint-Gelais. 16th Century. Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:P%C3%A9n%C3%A9lope,_La%C3%ABrte_et_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9maque_BnF_Fran%C3%A7ais_874_fol._8v.jpg

RIGHT: Deutsch: Roth ( Mittelfranken ). Schloss Ratibor: Festsaal ( 1893 ) - Stoffmalerei von Rudolf Seitz mit Penelope am Webstuhl. English: Roth ( Middle Franconia ). Ratibor castle: Great hall ( 1893 ) - textile mural by Rudolf Seitz showing Penelope at the loom. Photograph by Wolfgang Sauber of an architectural monument. On the list of cultural monuments of Bayern, no. D-5-76-143-18. Image is public domain as made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Via Wikimedia commons:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schloss_Ratibor_Festsaal_-_Wandmalerei_7_Penelope_am_Webstuhl.jpg


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POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

INDEX: Holding up The Odyssey as mirror in Hamlet
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2024/08/index-holding-up-odyssey-as-mirror-in.html
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