Audrey Dubois’s Reviews > Penelope's Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It > Status Update

"In an ancient world where social networks were welded, not by likes or viewing numbers on online media platforms, but by the links of reciprocity forged by real gift-giving"

so confused by this passage. comparing a youtuber to a guy who washes up on your island shipwrecked with no food or clothes. "here is a thumbs up for you, good traveler" "a golden chalice for my favorite content creator!"

"[Calypso] is singing and weaving with a golden shuttle. Odysseus, however, is not to be found within this intimate, private scene of a woman’s work: he is, instead, the poet says, sitting weeping on the shore, looking out to sea."

yeah he's doing man's work!!!

OK I know I was being a hater but I actually really do like the chapter about how Athena uses props and costumes to communicate perceived gender... Athena is a drag king to ME

"The presence of goddesses of sex, fertility, birth and motherhood across the ancient world (from Aphrodite to Ishtar to Isis) testifies to the pervasiveness of mothering"

the PERVASIVENESS of MOTHERING??? such is the case in any society with more than one generation I would think?????

"Cassandra makes salient the lot of every woman in the drama of the Trojan War: their bodies treated as objects by men, and their voices silenced– even when they attempt to speak. Which explains, perhaps, why Cassandra’s prophetic voice isn’t mentioned in the Iliad. Like the men of legend who refused to listen to her, Homer is simply the first man in recorded history to ignore what she has to say."

INSANE conclusion

hate the writing style sorryyyyy

"Chryseis doesn’t say a single word. Her role, it seems, is to be drowned out by her father’s voice in the drama of his determination to set her free, and his brazen run-in with a king; to be cast in his shadow as a sheltered young girl, and silent daughter."

the whole book is kind of redundant and projecting victimhood but it feels unfeminist to SAY that

listened to this all the way from Greene to Providence and I was still in the introduction............