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Lost Books of The Odyssey Comparison - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Directly link to the "No Man" intepretation
    - - "I let it be known that by the end of the feast I would be with the man who would be my husband."
      - "But I must come back once more when my days are done, and then finally, you will be waiting for me."
  - - - Refer to Odysseus' trick on Polyphemus ("No man will return to you, but not for a long while."
      - "No Man's Wife" can be referred as no man's wife or Odysseus's wife: here, we can see Penelope's determination live and die only as Odysseus' wife, at worst, she will then die as a no man's wife - which definition is not very positive to have as a woman in the Greek society.
- - - - Penelope was a literary device which highlighted the suffering and sacrifices of women which were often undervalued. With reference to the story of Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey and her lonely tale of longing, loathing wait emphasized the normal less importance than the central male character Odysseus’ sea wanderings and feats at the Trojan War.
      - When a man has his destiny to fulfill and he successfully does so,he receives praise. While on the other hand, a woman (the men's wife) fulfills her role as a wife, mother, and woman, society neither care to praise her courage nor sympathizes with her mental state. Here, the women's role are deemed as duty, in which one cannot expect anything in return.
- - - - The title, “An Ancient Gesture” released a preview hint that Penelope's weeping act has become a tradition of femininity over generations. This “gesture” related Millay’s speaker with Penelope as the poem unfolds that she also undergoes somewhat a similar situation.
        
        The title did not say the “act,” rather it is about “an” insignificant “gesture” that is often undervalued in Greek society. A hero, in his case, Odysseus, must not cry publicly. Or else his subject will take him as an emotionally unstable and weak ruler. Here, societal expectations and stereotypes required Odysseus to be emotionally strong enough by hiding his pain.
      - This poem also contains a sense of objectivity while discussing the traditional role of women suffering alone for the absence, or most precisely, “otherness” of their husbands.
    - - In the second stanza specifically, the speaker notes that Penelope’s gesture is genuine and bears the mark of the classical tradition, featured in the great Greek epic by Hope. This gesture directs how women (wives in most cases) should behave in the situation of an absent husband.