‘D’oh Brother Where Art Thou’: Homer’s Women in The Simpsons and Contemporary Screen Adaptations

Abstract

In the Odyssey, Homer’s Penelope and Circe have fundamentally important roles in ensuring the progression and success of the hero’s, Odysseus, journey home. Their actions in the Odyssey invite complex readings of the two women. Despite this, onscreen Penelope is often depicted as the “good, faithful” wife, and Circe as the “temptress”. Whilst these interpretations are not wrong, they are limited, cultivating a diminutive cultural understanding about Homer’s women. In this article I will use The Simpsons episode ‘Tales from the Public Domain’ as the foundation of my analysis, whereby I argue that screen adaptations perpetuate these gendered tropes further by relying on what is “known” about these women, instead of investigating their roles in ways that are significantly more complex. To achieve this, I will analyse how gender roles are presented in The Simpsons’ adaptation of the Odyssey, with a special focus on Penelope’s and Circe’s interaction with, and relationship to, the story’s hero, Odysseus. I will compare these representations to examples from other screen adaptations from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including Mario Camerini’s Ulysses, Andrei Konchalovsky’s The Odyssey, and Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

1. Introduction

Sheila Murnaghan maintains that Homer’s Odyssey is chiefly a poem about male accomplishment—that is, Odysseus’ journey home, the massacre of the suitors, and the reclamation of Ithaca’s throne—as written by a male author (Murnaghan 1994, pp. 80–81). The female characters are, subsequently, constructs of the male imagination and their actions are habitually dictated by their relationship to patriarchal figures or ideologies. Female action, consequently, becomes affiliated with patriarchal expectation, and female autonomy is judged upon its appropriateness and whether it is helpful towards the hero’s journey.1 That is not to say that female action in the Odyssey cannot be interpreted as complex, multifaceted, and even empowering by the modern reader, but that audiences must also recognise the limitation of those readings in that they are applying contemporary feminist ideologies to a deeply misogynistic literary history. It is beneficial, nevertheless, to recognise how Homer’s Odyssey, as the source text, can be read as offering a richer and more meaningful account of Penelope and Circe, even within the restrictive parameters of its androcentric narrative. Contemporary feminist scholars, for example, demonstrate a determination to challenge Penelope’s “wifeliness” by arguing that in the Odyssey, Penelope’s actions indicate a figure who is more independent and powerful than dominant cultural memories view her as being. Scholars have also suggested that Circe herself, like Penelope, has been misbranded with later renderings of her character. Furthermore, by reducing Circe’s function to “temptress” or “other woman”, creators neglect her helpfulness, and generosity towards Odysseus and his crew in the latter half of her narrative arc. I wish to add to this the understanding that, by reducing Penelope and Circe into these two roles, creators are consciously or unconsciously manifesting a sexist narrative, which places the women as binary opposites; for every wife, there is the “other woman”, tempting the husband away from his rightful marriage. Nevertheless, stereotypes of Penelope and Circe have become prominent within our cultural understanding of them, dictating a damning reflection of society’s slow-changing attitude towards female gender roles and sex.

By using The Simpsons’ adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey in ‘Tales from the Public Domain’ (season thirteen, episode fourteen, directed by Mike B. Anderson (2002)) as my primary text, this paper will argue that issues of gender and sex are exacerbated further in screen adaptations of the Odyssey—which have largely ignored the complexity of women’s roles, in favour of Odysseus’ androcentric adventure–narrative. To achieve this, I will first demonstrate how we might develop a more complex reading of Homer’s women—which allows us to think of Penelope and Circe as characters capable of existing beyond diminutive gender tropes that have, otherwise, been perpetuated onscreen. I will then analyse how The Simpsons represents the characters of Penelope and Circe onscreen, and identify what tropes are being emphasised or subverted. In doing so, I will offer a unique insight into how The Simpsons contributes towards a modern understanding of the Odyssey, by transferring the generic undertones of the sitcom (situational comedy) genre to the classical narrative. To underpin The Simpsons’ cultural value as a representation of wider cultural trends in screen adaptation, I will also analyse the episode in the context of other screen adaptation from the contemporary period (1945 onwards), such as Mario Camerini’s Ulysses (Camerini 1954), Andrei Konchalovsky’s The Odyssey (Konchalovsky 1997), and Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Coen and Coen 2000). I will ask: How do Penelope and Circe function in relation to Odysseus? What is their relationship to one another? And, to what extent do they conform to traditional ideologies of gender?

2. Reading the Odyssey

In the Odyssey, Penelope and Circe’s actions are limited, and this can have a striking effect on how they are interpreted. It is unsurprising, then, that Penelope is mostly remembered for her fidelity and endurance, for it is this that she is praised for mostly by other male characters. Yet, despite this, Penelope possesses the potential to disturb the hero’s journey. Indeed, in Penelope’s Renown, Marilyn A. Katz observes that Homer uses the stories of Helen and Clytemnestra to highlight the numerous narrative possibilities that might occur before Odysseus reaches Ithaca (Katz 1991). The story of Agamemnon, especially ‘functions not just as a foil or a warning motif in the poem, but as an alternative narrative structure’ (Katz 1991, p. 192). Until the reunion between Penelope and Odysseus in Book 23, there remains a fundamental uncertainty about Penelope’s fidelity, and Katz argues that by utilising Agamemnon’s story as a paradigm for the Odyssey, Homer shows that Penelope’s indeterminacy is a potential threat. Circe, in contrast, is often regarded as a seductress, or temptress; a result of her initial transformation of Odysseus’ men, the threat that she poses to Odysseus’ journey home, and her sexual engagement with him. Circe provides for Odysseus, nevertheless, the knowledge to travel first to Hades, and then home to Ithaca, thus demonstrating a benign quality in the goddess, which is often overlooked. The Odyssey, more generally, observes the benefits of patriarchal control over female autonomy. Without Odysseus resuming power in Ithaca, Penelope as a woman threatens social order and becomes too much like her cousin, Clytemnestra. Circe, meanwhile, needs to be subdued by Odysseus—who is aided in his task by Hermes, another man. Odysseus’ interaction with Circe, then, further asserts the importance of male control over female power. It is often female narrative manipulation, however, that provides Odysseus with the impetus to move around the plot points. The hero’s journey, therefore, is as much indebted to the actions of women, as it is to men.

Still, the benefits of patriarchal control over female autonomy are carefully observed throughout with allegories and warnings. Nested stories frequently contain stories of undesirable female behaviour, which are then used to analogise how women should conduct themselves. In Book 8, for example, the poet Demodocus performs for the Phaeacian court the story of Hephaestus, the lame god of blacksmiths, and his unfaithful wife, Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. In Demodocus’ song, Hephaestus learns that Aphrodite has been having sex with Ares, the god of War, upon Hephaestus’ bed, and to punish them, Hephaestus crafts unbreakable chains, and traps the two lovers in his bed. Whilst the narrative continues by focusing on Hephaestus’ unlikely triumph over Ares, offering a parable of the weak conquering the strong, the principal narrative centres on Aphrodite’s infidelity as an insult to her husband.

The bed serves chiefly as a tangible symbol of Aphrodite’s disloyalty, with Demodocus emphasising that Aphrodite and Ares had ‘shamed the bed of Lord Hephaestus’ (‘λέχος δ᾽ ᾔσχυνε καὶ εὐνὴν / Ἡφαίστοιο ἄνακτος’) (Homer 1963a, pp. 8.269–270).2 In Book 23, Homer returns to the marriage bed as a crux of fidelity, to underpin the tenuous terms of Odysseus’ return home. Uncertain of Odysseus’ identity, Penelope cunningly tests him by ordering that their marital bed be moved to the hallway. According to the mythos, the bed had been carved out of a living olive tree by Odysseus and should be unmovable. For Odysseus, therefore, Penelope’s words imply that the sanctity of the marriage bed had been tarnished. Homer offers rich imagery of the bed being cut away from its life source, the tree, and with the literal “death” of Odysseus’ living bed follows the theoretical “death” of his marriage. Penelope’s words, henceforth, are ‘“heart-grieving”’ (‘“θυμαλγὲς”’) for Odysseus (Homer 1963b, p. 23.183). Central to this sub-plot, is the story of Agamemnon—who returned home to find his bed and throne usurped by another man. For Agamemnon, though, it is Clytemnestra’s sexual infidelity, and her personal betrayal as his wife, that is most reprehensible. Penelope’s words are treated volatilely by Odysseus because they offer an alternative narrative: one that replicates Agamemnon’s doomed return home. This alternate ending, as Froma Zeitlan analyses, highlights the ‘principle anxiety that hovers over the whole poem’: Penelope’s sexual fidelity to Odysseus, and the bed sits at the epicentre of this anxiety (Zeitlin 1996, p. 122). The narrative can only be settled once Penelope reveals that she was merely testing her husband to protect the sanctity of their marriage bed, assuring Odysseus of her loyalty.

Penelope’s test, nevertheless, can be interpreted as a demonstration of her social awareness. She recognises the traps of patriarchy, and the risks imposed by inviting a man—who might not be her husband—to her bed. For Nancy Felson-Rubin, this is characteristic of the cunning Penelope, who ‘functions both as a subject weaving her own plot and as an object constituted by the gazes of various male characters’ (Felson-Rubin 1994, p. 3). The Odyssey, then, contains what Felson-Rubin describes as ‘“if-plots,” and contradictions’ (Felson-Rubin 1994, p. 4). If, utilising Felson-Rubin’s model, Penelope allows the man into her bed, and he is not Odysseus, she risks adultery—which, as Helen’s and Clytemnestra’s stories reveal, results in a revenge narrative. If, however, he is Odysseus, she can secure a successful reunion (Felson-Rubin 1994, p. 7). Penelope must, ultimately, negotiate each of her actions based upon their various outcomes. Penelope must be convinced that Odysseus is Odysseus or risk the damning consequences that befall an unfaithful wife—as demonstrated through the actions of her cousins, Helen and Clytemnestra.

When asking for Odysseus’ forgiveness, therefore, Penelope explains her actions by describing the precarity of her own position as a woman. She rationalises that she needed to test Odysseus because she feared that any deceitful man could beguile her, ‘“for many make cunning plans for their own gain”’ (‘“πολλοὶ γὰρ κακὰ κέρδεα βουλεύουσιν”’) (Homer 1963b, pp. 23.217). Through her cousin, Helen of Troy, Penelope describes the way in which men, and gods, can prompt women to act unfaithfully to their husbands, and reflects critically upon Helen’s own ‘“shameful”’ behaviour (Homer 1963b, pp. 23.218–222). In the context of the narrative, Penelope maintains it would have been neglectful to not verify Odysseus’ identity, especially considering the war caused by Helen’s own indiscretions. Penelope’s familial proximity to Helen, simultaneously, exaggerates the similarities between her position and Helen’s, as married women being courted by men. Indeed, by recalling Helen, Penelope warns that she too could have been unfaithful to Odysseus; it was only with her own integrity, cunning, and determination that she was not. By hypothesising that Helen herself must have been charmed by the gods, Penelope further stresses her loyalty to Odysseus by explaining that had she been unfaithful, it would have been an unwilling act. Odysseus, then, benefits from Penelope’s test, as she is protecting herself, and his property, from the nefarious plans of other men. Penelope, thus, navigates the social parameters that determine how she is perceived by others, whilst also highlighting the precarity of Odysseus’ own position as an absent husband, both uncertain and reliant on his wife’s fidelity. Penelope’s test demonstrates that Odysseus’ fate was always determined with Penelope’s actions.

Penelope’s potential role as antagonist to Odysseus is further emphasised through the praise issued to Penelope by the ghost of Agamemnon. In Book 11, Agamemnon recounts how his own wife, Clytemnestra, plotted against and successfully killed him. Penelope’s closeness to the other woman, much like Helen, stresses that Penelope could be a threat to Odysseus. Agamemnon reassures Odysseus, nonetheless, that Penelope is too wise to betray him, as his own wife did (Homer 1963a, pp. 11.444–446). In Book 24, furthermore, after hearing how Penelope tricked the suitors with her weaving, Agamemnon applauds Odysseus on obtaining a wife of virtue, exclaiming ‘“Happy son of Laertes, resourceful Odysseus/You acquired a wife of excellence”’ (‘“ὄλβιε Λαέρταο πάϊ, πολυμήχαν᾽ Ὀδυσσεῦ/ἦ ἄρα σὺν μεγάλῃ ἀρετῇ ἐκτήσω ἄκοιτιν”’) (Homer 1963b, pp. 24.192–193). As before, Agamemnon praises ‘“excellent”’ (‘“ἀμύμονι”’) Penelope on her endurance, remarking that she shall be remembered for her constancy, unlike Clytemnestra whose story shall be ‘“hateful”’ (‘“στυγερὴ”’) (Homer 1963b, pp. 24.199–200). That Penelope is praised is of particular importance as it further separates Penelope from Clytemnestra, and the madness that possessed her cousin. Indeed, whilst Clytemnestra is arguably of similar intelligence to Penelope, her intellect is not recognised as her acts of marital infidelity make her unworthy of praise by the male speaker. Penelope’s actions, meanwhile, although recognisably cunning, remain centred around Odysseus, his journey, and her devotion towards him. The comparisons made between Penelope and her cousins, as such, establish Penelope’s capability to negotiate her actions in a way that displays her intelligence and loyalty, but also her potential to cause harm.

As other critics have observed, in the Odyssey, Penelope’s actions are not the rule but, rather, the exception for female behaviour (see Katz 1991; Murnaghan 2011). Perhaps because of this, feminist scholars have looked towards Penelope’s actions to determine how she exercises power within the social parameters imposed upon her gender, demonstrating a desire to identify Penelope as a figure who, in and outside of her role of wife, exerts a great deal of power over her own story.3 Clayton, for example, argues that Penelope has strong narrative autonomy, as she literally and figuratively weaves her own sub-plots (Clayton 2004). Foley, meanwhile, proposes that Penelope’s role is not bounded to the domestic sphere but rather extends into the masculine role of leadership (Foley 1978). Marquardt and Winkler, in turn, assert that Penelope demonstrates great levels of control over the events that occur in Ithaca over the course of the Odyssey (Marquardt 1985; Winkler 1990). Within these readings, we might recognise a Penelope who is assertive, and self-serving, but most importantly, complex—whose enigmatic actions have an undeniable effect on the outcome of the Odyssey. For modern audiences, these conclusions demonstrate Penelope’s capability to hold within her several interpretations beyond that of her most consistent attribute: the “faithful wife”.

Homer’s Circe, like Penelope, is a complicated character. Circe is the mistress of her own island—which she protects from the besieging men—and she is dangerous, exhibiting unnatural bodily powers over all creatures. In the early stages of her narrative, especially, Homer informs his audience that there is something strange and ominous about this goddess and the island she presides over. Speaking to the Phaeacians, Odysseus recalls the mountain wolves and lions living around Circe’s house, which she had ‘“bewitched”’ (‘“καταθέλγω”’) and tamed with drugs (Homer 1963a, pp. 10.212–213). The wild creatures fawned over Odysseus’ men, he states, like dogs with ‘“their long tails wagging”’ (‘“οὐρῇσιν μακρῇσι περισσαίνοντες ἀνέσταν”’) (Homer 1963a, p. 10.215). The image of the wild beasts, emasculated and domesticated by Circe, affirms that there is an unnatural balance to life on Aeaea. This strangeness is unequivocally exemplified with her gender, and the power she yields as a female figure. Audiences, consequently, might look towards Circe’s femininity as a distortion of the domestic.

As Christiana Franco notes, ‘Female divinities can represent either crystallized or subversive aspects of human femininity […] or even possess typically masculine traits’ (Franco 2015, p. 60). Circe utilises her femininity to disguise her intentions. When Odysseus’ men first happen upon Circe, for instance, she is singing and weaving (Homer 1963a, pp. 10.220–224). Due to Circe’s feminine performance, his men decide that the person inside is either a goddess or a woman, and therefore, unthreatening (Homer 1963a, p. 10.228). In a falsified gesture of xenia (hospitality) towards the strangers, she defers to her victims, bidding them to sit in her halls, whilst she provides them with food and drink before striking them with her ‘“rod”’ (‘“ῥάβδῳ”’) and transforming them into pigs (Homer 1963a, pp. 10.230–238). Her femininity, thereby, becomes the weapon with which she deceives and attacks. The parallel between Circe’s episode and Penelope’s own actions back in Ithaca has been noted by critics, like Helen P. Foley and Charles Segal, who write that both Penelope and Circe find themselves surrounded by gluttonous men, who threaten the status quo of their respective islands (Segal 1968, p. 422; Foley 1978, p. 10). Foley explains, like Circe, Penelope turns ‘her guests into swine, into unmanly banqueters, lovers of dance and song rather than war’, who lack Odysseus’ strength and masculinity (Foley 1978, p. 10). Circe’s actions, however, are perceivably more malevolent than Penelope’s. Penelope’s own power is metaphorical and, thereby, “safe”; her suitors never undergo a literal transformation. Her power, assumed in Odysseus’ absence, also has a visible ending—which is indicated with the trial of the olive tree bed and the sexual union of husband and wife, whereby Odysseus resumes control over Ithaca. Circe, meanwhile, lives independently on Aeaea, maintaining a female utopia absent of the sexual, social, and political orders of patriarchy. Unlike Penelope, who falls back into her role as wife, Circe must be forced to yield to Odysseus the power that she has appropriated; a power she will reassume once Odysseus leaves.

During this exchange in Aeaea, Judith Yarnall keenly observes that Circe’s magic appears ‘to reside in the drug rather than the rod’ (Yarnall 1994, p. 12). The rod (or wand), therefore, has a more symbolic, rather than practical, function within the narrative, offering audiences a physical representation of ‘female dominance over the male’ and ‘of phallic powers improperly assumed’ (Yarnall 1994, p. 12). Odysseus’ encounter with Circe as such asserts patriarchal (and ostensibly natural) order within Aeaea, as first her drug and then her wand are made impotent with male intervention. Moreso, through the phallic image of his sword, drawn from beside his thigh, as if to kill and impale Circe upon it, Odysseus emphasises the natural position of power he assumes as a man (Homer 1963a, pp. 10.321–322). It is a power that, as a woman, Circe can only falsely replicate through magic and craft. As Hall translates, by unsheathing his sword, Odysseus ‘enacts the “overlapping of sexual control and violence” in the patriarchal world of the Odyssey: now he can sleep with Circe safely, freed of his previous fear of being rendered “naked, worthless, and unmanned” (10.301, 10.341)’ (Hall 2008, p. 189). Yarnall, however, argues that this exchange is not a moment of defined domination and submission, ‘What is actually defeated in their encounter […] is the notion that one of them must have clear dominance over the other’ (Yarnall 1994, p. 21). As a goddess, Circe still possesses her powers and knowledge, however, in deference to Odysseus’ display of masculinity, and her later activities are—to borrow Yarnall’s terminology—“transformed” from acts of threatening dominance, to acts of respect for the mortal who bested her.

Indeed, in sharp contrast to her original hostility, in the second half of her Odyssean narrative, Circe performs great acts of generosity and kindness, as she becomes both hostess and guide to Odysseus and his men. Firstly, following Odysseus’ orders, she return his men to their rightful forms; making them ‘“younger than before,/more beautiful and taller to behold”’ (‘“ἄνδρες δ᾽ ἂψ ἐγένοντο νεώτεροι ἢ πάρος ἦσαν,/καὶ πολὺ καλλίονες καὶ μείζονες εἰσοράασθαι”’) (Homer 1963a, pp. 10.395–396). Further on, she offers Odysseus guidance, informing him that before he can return home to Ithaca, he must first visit Hades to seek out the prophet Teiresias (Homer 1963a, pp. 10.490–493). And in Book 12, after Odysseus returns from Hades and before he departs to Ithaca, Circe describes the monsters and trials that he shall face upon the sea, and how to overcome them (Homer 1963a, pp. 12.39–141). Homer’s Circe is still powerful, and she remains a goddess, but her authority does not precede that of Odysseus, despite her godly advantages. Inasmuch as we recognise that Penelope’s actions are informed by her marriage and her subservience to Odysseus’, so too must we acknowledge that Circe’s later actions are mindful of Odysseus as both her lover and as the presiding masculine power in Aeaea. Homer shares, then, with his audience a version of Circe who is kind and benevolent, who is capable of malevolence, and who still makes independent choices, but acts only within the social parameters that Odysseus has established upon her island.

The shift from hostile goddess to kindly hostess does, to great advantage, provide depth to Circe’s character. Despite this, in Western media, Circe is most often fixed as a temptress.4 Circe, as temptress, ‘portray[s] the attractive seductiveness of the beautiful alien, a contributor to Man’s fall and the agency deflecting him from the journey and quest’ (Burrows et al. 1973, p. 423). For Simone de Beauvoir, this is not a surprise, and even now, ‘The woman who freely exercises her charms—adventuress, vamp, femme fatale—remains a disquieting type’ (de Beauvoir 2010, p. 213). In Hollywood films, de Beauvoir continues, ‘the Circe image survives as the bad woman’, a temptress or femme fatale, ‘who uses her charms to seduce and lure men into threatening situations’, thus perpetuating ‘the old spectre of dissolute women’ (de Beauvoir 2010, pp. 213–14). For men, the appeal of the bad woman is linked to his fear of her sexuality. As a product of male sexual fantasy, the bad woman is a dangerous Object, unyielding and assertive, who must be conquered in combat (de Beauvoir 2010, p. 214). Once conquered, the dangerous woman submits to male power. For Circe, who lures Odysseus’ men into her home, whose transformative powers threaten his journey, and who must be defeated through sexual combat, this is an apt overview of her role in the initial stages of her episode. It is not, however, a complete account of her character. Certainly, as the moniker of “faithful wife” seemingly undervalues Penelope’s narrative importance, so too does the archetype of “temptress” minimise Circe’s role and the impact that she has upon the outcome of the Odyssey.

To reiterate, despite being informed by patriarchal ideologies, the female characters within Homer’s poem often provide direction and impetus for male action. Circe gives Odysseus the knowledge to move around the plot points to ensure his safe return home to Ithaca. Odysseus, moreover, does not request, nor force, this information from Circe; it is given freely. Scholars, therefore, have rightly posited that the archetypal function applied to Circe is not a Homeric tradition. Rather, to quote Yarnall, Circe’s role has been reshaped with ‘centuries of misogyny’ (Yarnall 1994, p. 194). Yarnall, in particular, addresses how Western literature has predominantly ignored the duality of Circe, promoting her instead as an archetypal figure, who appears ‘again and again as an expression of a basic human experience, fear or desire’ (Yarnall 1994, p. 2). By focusing on Circe’s “bad” bodily influence—through both physical transformation and sex—Western adaptations have, unfortunately, overlooked her Homeric “goodness”; as Yarnall points out, Homer himself ‘makes unmistakably clear Circe’s role in leading Odysseus to Ithaca and Penelope’ (Yarnall 1994, p. 24). Greta Hawes, similarly, comments that in Homeric tradition, Circe’s ‘strange powers have a numinous ambivalence: she keeps a strange menagerie of men transformed into fawning lions and wolves, yet, equally, uses her divine knowledge to aid her guests’ (Hawes 2017, p. 132). Hawes’ argument echoes that of Segal, who praises Circe’s ‘synoptic quality’, as she balances between ‘strange, incomprehensible danger, yet sudden, inexplicable generosity’ (Segal 1968, p. 442). Both Hawes and Segal lament the loss of Circe’s complexity in later tradition; as Hawes writes, the goddess ‘becomes an increasingly pigeonholed, entirely combatant figure’ (Hawes 2017, p. 132). Circe as temptress, furthermore, is placed in direct opposition to Penelope. The effect of this is twofold: Penelope’s subservience, and loyalty to Odysseus as her rightful husband, is exemplified with Circe’s perceived carnality, and sexual enticement towards him; Penelope’s unrelenting fidelity as a “faithful wife”, in turn, vilifies Circe for her promiscuity.

3. ‘Tales from the Public Domain’: The Simpsons’ Odyssey

First aired on 17th March 2002, The Simpsons ‘Tales from the Public Domain’ is an anthology episode, which parodies three classical stories, including Homer’s Odyssey; the story of Joan of Arc patron saint of France; and William Shakespeare’s c.1600 tragedy Hamlet (Shakespeare 2008). The episode begins with a letter from the library, informing Homer that he has an overdue library book, ‘Classics for Children’—which he had checked out when Bart was a baby. Before returning it, Homer reads from the book beginning with the Odyssey, and the siege of Troy. Following Troy’s defeat, Odysseus (Homer Simpson, voiced by Dan Castellaneta) and his crew begin their return home to Ithaca. Odysseus, however, refuses to sacrifice a sheep in thanks of the gods, claiming that the act is ‘barbaric’. Angry at Odysseus’ refusal to offer them a sacrifice, the gods retaliate. Poseidon (Captain Horatio McCallister, voiced by Hank Azaria) sabotages Odysseus’ journey home, first by blowing him towards the ‘Crazy Islands’—inhabited by the sirens—and again, by knocking him off course towards Circe’s Island. Following his encounter with Circe (Lindsey Naegle, voiced by Tress MacNeille), Odysseus travels through Hades, crossing the river Styx, before finally returning home to Ithaca. As per tradition, upon Odysseus’ return, he kills the suitors and is reunited with his wife, Penelope (Marge Simpson, voiced by Julie Kavner).

The Simpsons is an animated sitcom that satirises American culture, media, and politics. As Jonathan Gray also observes, The Simpsons is ‘deeply parodic, relying on our knowledge of other genres and texts […] in order to complete the joke’ (Gray 2006, p. 2). The most prominent gesture of this is, perhaps, reflected in the title of the book ‘Classics for Children’. The title suggests that the stories are culturally significant texts that are reworked for a younger audience. Yet, the three stories told are decidedly grim, with endings that revolve around murder. The young target audience of the book and its violent content, as such, appear paradoxical. In the context of The Simpsons, what makes these texts for children is their oversimplified narratives, as the texts are reduced to their most basic plot points, to make them attainable to all ages. At which point, the audience is comedically made aware of Homer’s own lack of intelligence. The Odyssey is, perhaps, the most personally significant story for Homer due to his name, but Homer is unable to make an intellectual connection to the epic. Instead, he asks his eight-year-old daughter, Lisa (voiced by Yeardley Smith), whether Homer’s Odyssey is ‘about a minivan he rented once’. The statement simultaneously offers a comedic association between the epic itself, Homer, and the Honda Odyssey vehicle, whilst also helpfully underpinning Homer’s own lack of cultural knowledge. In which case, ‘Classics for Children’ appears to be a more useful resource for Homer to learn from than Lisa—who corrects her father’s misunderstanding.

In retelling the Odyssey, The Simpsons parodies Homeric themes and subjects, through a primarily contemporary dialogue that is instilled with innuendo and intertextual references. The first act of ‘Tales from the Public Domain’, for instance, is subtitled ‘D’oh, Brother Where Art Thou’, referencing the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? directed by Joel and Ethan Coen (Coen and Coen 2000), and another adaptation of the Odyssey. The joke here only works if the audience knows of the Coen brothers’ film and its own Odyssean connections. Another example occurs after King Priam (Ned Flanders, voiced by Harry Shearer) accepts the gift of the wooden horse. Remarking upon his collection of wooden animals, Priam comments, ‘Now throughout history when people get wood, they’ll think of Trojans’. The double entendre, obvious only to a mature audience, is a reference to the condom brand Trojan. In this case, The Simpsons is both using the shared name to make a sex-related joke and commenting upon society’s literacy awareness. These intertextual references are anachronistic in their usage, combining contemporary texts with the Ancient Greek environment to remodel the epic as a comedy. Audience enjoyment, subsequently, derives as much (or more so) from audience understanding of The Simpsons’ contemporary allusions as to its classical ones.

Audience knowledge of The Simpsons’ characters is, if not required, then helpful in this retelling of the Odyssey, as the episode utilises running themes and jokes from the larger series, to enhance the parodic allusions being made to the epic poem. During Odysseus’ encounter with the sirens, for instance, the lyrics of the sirens’ song emphasise their supposed sexual appeal to the men: ‘Our hot sex will leave you perspiring’ and ‘On the island, we’ll sex you up!’ Lured in by the song, and the promise of sex, Odysseus and his crew largely neglect the shipwrecks around them and can perceive no known danger to themselves. As they reach the sirens, however, the lyrics are strongly juxtaposed with the sudden appearance of Homer’s sisters-in-law, Patty and Selma (voiced by Julie Kavner) as the sirens themselves. Upon seeing the sirens, Odysseus and his crew react in disgust, Professor Frink’s glasses literally shattering upon the sight of them. The crew turn their ship around and quickly sail away, not to save themselves from danger but because the sirens are so disgusting, the men have lost all sexual desire for them. For the comedy of the scene to function, the animation develops a pre-existent understanding of who Patty and Selma are. Recalling Marge’s observation about her older sisters, for instance, Marge states that her sister Patty ‘chose the life of celibacy. Selma simply had celibacy thrust upon her’ (‘Principle Charming’, directed by Mark Kirkland (1991), season two, episode fourteen). Throughout their appearances on The Simpsons, Patty and Selma are portrayed as largely undesirable both due to their appearance and cynical attitudes. Alongside this, they largely disapprove of Marge’s husband, Homer, who dislikes them in turn. Patty’s and Selma’s characterisation as Sirens thus works because it develops ongoing gags in the series; the understanding that, physically and socially, Patty and Selma are not presented to appeal to the male gaze. But in doing so, the enhanced lens of parody accurately replicates the sirens’ powerful subversion of sexual allure: their beautiful voices conceal their actual monstrous and murderous presence. Patty’s and Selma’s casting as the sirens is doubly parodic because they have such grating voices in the series. The sultry voices singing in The Simpsons, therefore, are incongruent with the tones typically associated with the sisters, making their reveal more shocking and, subsequently, more comedic.

Penelope’s (Marge) role is similarly parodied through a combination of narrative exaggeration and the pre-existing character traits associated with her. For example, in The Simpsons, Penelope’s narrative of patience and fidelity to Odysseus is amplified to exaggerate both the extent and the excessiveness of her wait. As Penelope speaks to her son, Telemachus (Bart Simpson, voiced by Nancy Cartwright), she reflects that it has been many years since she has last seen Odysseus, and hopes that he is still the same ‘magnificent, physical specimen’ he once was. As she speaks, Penelope turns and holds up a framed photo of Odysseus. In the photo, he has long blond hair and a chiselled physique. Unlike Penelope, the audience know that Odysseus’ appearance has drastically changed; rather than appearing like a traditional Homeric hero, Odysseus is instead the traditional sitcom dad: bumbling, overweight, and balding.5 Penelope’s desire that Odysseus has stayed the same is an unfeasible wish—which is presented as a visual gag for the omniscient audience. Penelope’s wait, subsequently, appears misguided and naïve.

As per Odyssean tradition, Penelope’s suitors have a similarly agitated wait. Penelope agrees that, since it has been 20 years and the suitors have been ‘very patient’, she will select a new husband. One suitor (Sideshow Mel, voiced by Castellaneta) interrupts her by stating, ‘we’ve been beyond patient’. In The Simpsons, the suitors are visually and vocally agitated with Penelope—who, in turn, seems unaware of their annoyance. Another suitor (Krusty the Clown, voiced by Castellaneta) complains, ‘when we came here Helen of Troy was hot, now look at her’. The scene pans to Helen, who is portrayed by Agnes Skinner (voiced by Tress MacNeille), Principal Skinner’s elderly mother. Helen quips, ‘this is the face that launched a thousand ships—the other way!’6 The Simpsons utilises visual gags to confront the excessiveness of Penelope’s wait. Helen’s appearance, in this case, contrasts with traditional images as the most beautiful woman on earth, promised to Paris by Aphrodite. Instead, Helen is visibly older, and—by her own admission—unattractive. By emphasising how much time has passed and contrasting the suitors’ agitation in comparison to Penelope’s calm demeanour, The Simpsons parodies representations of Penelope as a complacent stay-at-home wife, for which she has become renowned.

In The Simpsons, Marge is a typical sitcom housewife and mother (Virdis 2010). She is typically presented as the mature, sensible partner, who takes care of her frequently foolish, blue-collar husband, and the needs of their children. She is attentive, caring, and often a source of moral guidance for her family. As a stay-at-home mother, Marge is also shown performing most of the household’s domestic tasks, all whilst wearing her pearl necklace and high heels.7 While Marge’s appearance is feminine to the point of parody, her function in the series is resolutely as a homemaker. As David Feltmate and Kimberly P. Brackett have observed, any efforts to deviate from this role are considered disruptions to the family, which must be remediated by Marge returning to the domestic space (Feltmate and Brackett 2014, pp. 542, 545).8 As a sitcom housewife, then, Marge feels the strain of being a homemaker, but it is fundamental to the series that Marge also finds comfort within this role and will, eventually, return equilibrium to the domestic space. The transference of Homer and Marge’s TV gender roles to Odysseus and Penelope is made explicit during their reunion in Ithaca. Penelope is, at first, annoyed at Odysseus, commenting ‘look who the fates dragged in’. Odysseus, however, articulates his remorse and acts upon his apology by ‘taking out the trash’ (defeating the suitors by impaling them all on a single spear). Penelope, unable to ‘stay mad’ at Odysseus, forgives him, and marital bliss is restored, signposted by the ‘aww’ of the impaled suitors. Marge, like Penelope, is very faithful to Homer/Odysseus,9 and she consistently forgives him when his own actions have created disharmony within the family.10 The Simpsons, therefore, uses the established traits associated with Marge to highlight the expectations of Penelope as a literary wife to support her husband, children, and home. Meanwhile, it criticises the value that society has previously and continues to place upon gendered behaviour—which has been a longstanding source of comedy for sitcoms and domcoms (domestic comedies).

After the couple embrace, Penelope asks Odysseus to ‘regale [her] with tales of [his] adventures’. Odysseus immediately complains that Penelope is ‘suffocating’ him and announces that he is going to Moe’s (the tavern, where Homer frequently drinks). The exchange is portrayed as a comedic parley between a married couple. In the framework of the Odyssey, Penelope has every right to demand her husband’s attention—Odysseus has been away for years. Homer/Odysseus’ words, however, falsely suggest that Marge/Penelope is smothering him with her overattentiveness. But rather than vilify Penelope as a “nagging” wife, “henpecking” her husband—an inherently conservative and sexist gendered stereotype employed frequently by sitcoms—the episode, instead, criticises Odysseus. Indeed, his refusal to engage in any meaningful conversation with Penelope highlights his ineffectualness as a husband as he neglects her emotional needs. The episode ends, then, with Penelope’s (understandable) visual frustration, as she begins the start of another wait for her husband to return home. In this final scene, The Simpsons encourages their audience to consider Homer/Odysseus’ actions through the eyes of Marge/Penelope, as the long-suffering wife—whose sacrifices, made for her husband and family, are left underappreciated.

Unlike Penelope, whose role is largely reshaped with Marge’s characterisation as a homemaker, Circe is portrayed by a minor character, Lindsey Naegle. Lindsey’s flexibility as a minor repeating figure, arguably, facilitates her depiction as Circe by embracing what Circe represents: a sense of threat and surprise. Indeed, in The Simpsons, Lindsey is typically characterised as a career woman; she is ‘independent, strong-willed, no-nonsense, and most importantly ambitious enough to not let blatant and persistent sexism stand in her way to success’ (TV Tropes n.d.b). Lindsey rarely settles into a single career, and appears to hold a different job with each appearance,11 but she approaches each business venture with determination, and is often seen as ruthless and antagonistic.12 Lindsey’s adaptability to change is thus transferred to Circe, enabling the deviations the episode makes to Circe’s traditional representation to run effectively. Indeed, in the extremity of her ambitions and her flexibility as a minor character, she functions as Marge’s foil and exemplifies Marge’s own motherliness by contrast with her lack of warmth, morality, stability, and domestic inclination. As such, she facilitates the divisive characterisation of Penelope and Circe as two incompatible aspects of womanhood.

Whilst Marge largely influences Penelope’s representation as homemaker, Lindsey as Circe represents new, and potentially dangerous, obstacles to the main characters. Unlike Marge/Penelope, who wears a modest, pale pink chiffon dress, which complements her soft femininity and calm personality, Lindsey/Circe’s dress accentuates her voluptuous figure. The dress is bright pink, with a low neckline that exposes her cleavage, and a slit up the side of her skirt. The dress and its styling are intentionally sexual, drawing the viewer’s gaze to Circe’s body and presenting her as a stereotypical object of male sexual desire—one untethered by the safety of the domestic sphere. Circe’s visual representation is not atypical, but rather is a nod to the long tradition of using Circe as a warning against the dangers of female power via her sexuality. In The Simpsons, however, Circe’s apparent sexual appeal fails to interest Odysseus’ crew, who dismiss her as another ‘weirdo’. Tradition is, thus, subverted as Circe’s sexuality—whilst explicit in her visual coding—fails as the source of her power over men.

Indeed, the crew are very aware of the Odyssean narrative they are part of, and unlike the sailors in the original story, they understand that Circe is a potential threat. They are wilfully ignorant of this danger, however, choosing instead to focus on their own appetites. Their stupidity is exemplified with the visual cues within Circe’s environment and speech. Circe, for example, introduces herself as a sorceress and reveals herself as a powerful being. When Circe seductively invites Odysseus’ men to drink from her cauldron, the scene pans to a caricature illustration of a black witch’s cauldron. To complement this imagery, the cauldron is filled with a bubbling, toxic green liquid and surrounded by the skeletons of her previous victims. Odysseus’ crew, nevertheless, are ignorant to these explicit dangers. Lenny (voiced by Harry Shearer) comments that he ‘was in the mood for something bubbling’ and the crew walk over to the cauldron, kicking over the skeletons, to drink from it. They are then transformed into pigs. The Simpsons, consequently, subverts tradition by presenting Circe as a failed temptress, whose sexuality poses no actual danger to Odysseus and his crew. The adaptation of Circe and her encounter with the sailors, instead, highlights that it is the sailors who are at fault. Due to their own stupidity, they ignore the explicit dangers posed by Circe and, to counter her more traditional depictions, they are not even seduced by her feminine wiles, despite being so eager to ‘kiss’ the sirens earlier in the episode.

In the traditional Odyssean narrative, the crew’s actions are contrasted to those of Odysseus to exemplify his own heroism. Unlike his crew, Odysseus resists Circe and her temptations and uses his own strength to overpower hers and save his men. As Edith Hall observes, Odysseus is remarkable because he is unlike other men; he is brave like Hector, and a talented archer like Heracles, but he is also intelligent and cunning (polumētis), self-disciplined, and ‘“versatile”’ (polútropos) (Hall 2008, pp. 101–2). Odysseus, Hall remarks, ‘’is an all-rounder, an archetypal “Renaissance man” […] There is scarcely a manly pursuit for which he does not offer himself as an idealized forerunner’ (Hall 2008, p. 102). In The Simpsons, however, Homer is a stereotypical sitcom dad; he is idiotic, arrogant, lazy, and greedy. The Simpsons embeds these same characteristics into Homer’s performance as Odysseus and, thus, aligns itself more closely with Ancient Greek tragedy, whereby the perceivably noble and princely virtues bestowed upon Odysseus by Homer are condemned as immoral acts of deception and arrogance. Indeed, as Silvia Montiglio writes, Odysseus’ ‘cunning, eloquence, and inventiveness are no longer positive qualities, as in Homer, but dubious talents’ and ‘are condemned as intrinsically immoral’ (Montiglio 2011, p. 8; see also Mahaffy 1874). In The Simpsons, Homer’s performance as Odysseus similarly strips him of his nobility to demonstrate that he is no different to his men and is certainly not the hero Homer purports him to be. After his men are transformed into pigs, Odysseus arrives at Circe’s palace and observing the pigs at the cauldron, remarks upon their likeness to his friends. Despite these obvious visual warnings, Odysseus proceeds to eat the pigs, and subsequently, cannibalises his crew. After complaining that he is still hungry, Circe asks, ‘Didn’t you eat enough of your friends?’ Odysseus is horrified at this revelation, but again The Simpsons observes that it is Odysseus’ own ignorance that is at fault. Circe states that she has been telling Odysseus ‘for hours’ that he was eating his friends, but Odysseus continued to pursue his greed rather than listening.13 In this parody, therefore, Circe is only perceptively “evil” because Odysseus and his crew are so outrageously stupid and greedy. It is not necessary, furthermore, in this retelling, for Odysseus to sexually conquer Circe because Circe is not the real threat, Odysseus is. Circe, therefore, purposefully fails as a temptress because her role is not to seduce the men. Circe, instead, functions as a vehicle for the episode’s parody of Odysseus and his crew because she exposes their lack of heroism despite the history of texts and adaptations that have celebrated Odysseus’ bravery, his intellect, and his excellence.

Due to the structuring of the anthology episode to accommodate three stories, The Simpsons’ Odyssean narrative is just 7:39 min long. As such, the episode condenses the Odyssey down to encapsulate what it identifies as its “main parts”, primarily focusing on Homer/Odysseus’ journey and “heroic” return home to his patient and faithful wife despite, as Francesca Maria Richards rightly points out, this trajectory constituting ‘less than one third of the poem’ (Richards 2016, p. 7). It is these narrative characteristics, nevertheless, that make the Odyssean narrative recognisable across other genres and mediums. In Duccio Tessari’s Spaghetti Western The Return of Ringo (Tessari 1965), for example, Captain Montgomery “Ringo” Brown (Giuliano Gemma) returns from the American Civil War to find his hometown overtaken by bandits, and his wife engaged to one of their leaders. Ringo disguises himself not only to infiltrate the gang and restore order to his home, but to determine if his wife has remained faithful to him. Charles Frazier’s historical novel Cold Mountain (Frazier 1997) and its film adaptation (Cold Mountain, directed by Anthony Minghella (2003)), in comparison, tells the story of a wounded soldier, W. P. Inman—who, near the end of the American Civil War, deserts the Confederate army to return home to Cold Mountain and his true love, Ada Monroe. Both texts are excellent examples of what we recognise as Odyssean: a man’s arduous journey home to his home and wife. Notably, Penelope is rarely the subject of the narrative, but is rather a destination; her role is to remain steadfast so Odysseus might reach her.

In The Simpsons, Homer/Odysseus similarly embarks on a perilous journey home and upon arrival, saves his wife from remarrying by killing the suitors. His journey, however, is portrayed as a catalogue of his mistakes, rather than a tableau of his heroic triumphs; for instance, he refuses to make a sacrifice to the gods, allows himself to be seduced by the sirens, and eats his friends on Circe’s Island. Further to this, Homer/Odysseus is portrayed as stupid, greedy, and negligent of his wife’s emotional needs. He thus lacks any of the character’s redeeming features like his cunning intelligence, or his apparent devotion to his wife. Marge/Penelope, meanwhile, is criticised for fulfilling the traditional role for which she has become famed: waiting. By highlighting how many years have passed since Homer/Odysseus left, the episode questions the viability of Marge/Penelope’s actions as she waits for an unthankful husband who, after 20 years, would rather be at the pub than talking to her. By adapting that which is most recognisably Odyssean (a man’s journey and a woman’s wait), The Simpsons thereby parodies the cultural emphasis placed upon Odysseus’ heroic voyage and Penelope’s own marital fidelity.

That The Simpsons decided to include Circe in their retelling, meanwhile, speaks greatly of her cultural significance. Circe, as Hall writes, ‘is probably the most famous figure in the Odyssey besides its hero, Penelope and Polyphemus’ (Hall 2008, p. 33). For example, Circe appears in TV shows such as Hercules: The Animated Series (‘Hercules and the Song of Circe’, directed by Phil Weinstein (1998), season one, episode twenty-five), Sabrina: The Animated Series, (‘Saturday Night Furor’, directed by Ferk and Hyden (1999), season one, episode thirty-two), Atlantis (‘The Song of the Sirens’, directed by Declan O’Dwyer (2013), season one, episode six; ‘Touched by the Gods: Part One’, directed by Jeremy Webb (2013), season one, episode twelve), and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (first appearance: ‘Chapter Twenty-Three: Heavy Is the Crown’, directed by Rob Seidenglanz (2020), season three, episode three). In the Monster High franchise, Circe is the mother of Casta Fierce (voiced by Erin Fitzgerald), a character introduced to the YouTube web series in 2014 (Monster High—Season 5: Episode 1 (Casta Vote) 2014, by DreamsOfMonsterHigh). Since 1949, Circe has appeared as a villain in the DC comic books, primarily opposing Wonder Woman (first appeared in Wonder Woman #37, by Robert Kanigher (1949)), and was adapted to screen in Justice League Unlimited (‘This Little Piggy’, directed by Dan Riba (2004), season one, episode five; ‘Dead Reckoning’, directed by Riba (2006), season three, episode six). Marvel comics, comparatively, introduced Circe (named Sersi) as a superheroine in 1976 (first appeared in The Eternals #3, by Jack Kirby (1976)). Marvel’s Sersi was then adapted to screen by Chloé Zhao (Eternals, Zhao 2021). Notably, these examples are all fantasy or fantasy-adjacent texts. Due to Circe’s cultural legacy as one of the first known literary witches, she is intrinsically linked with magic and the supernatural. As such, she is easily appropriated into these alternative narratives. Meanwhile, for the more knowing audience, her appearance functions as an Easter Egg that reinforces the text’s origins in the fantasy world. It achieves this by offering a canonical, magical history based upon the audiences’ own potential knowledge.

Circe’s fame is, in part, derived from the strong cultural resonance her story has on Western tradition. Hall writes that ‘it is Circe’s transformation of Odysseus’ crew into pigs that is the ancestor of all our countless tales of forcible human-animal metamorphosis from ancient Greece via Ovid and Apuleius to Kafka and recent fiction’ (Hall 2008, p. 33). Certainly, of these appearances, Circe is most predominantly adapted as a witch who transforms men into pigs. For example, in DuckTales (‘Home Sweet Homer’, directed by Alan Zaslove (1987), series one, episode thirty), Circe (voiced by Tress MacNeille) is a sorceress designed in the shape of an anthropomorphic pig, who wants to usurp King Homer and claim leadership of Ithaquak. Throughout the episode, Circe uses her power to transform several other characters into literal pigs. Comparatively, in Hercules: The Animated Series ‘The Song of Circe’, Circe is a witch desperately searching for romance. Voiced by Idina Menzel, Circe sings to the men of Greece, seducing them, to find her ‘perfect man’. When she finds her love interests lacking, Circe transforms them into animals and imprisons them on her island. In both instances, Circe is regarded as the central antagonist, utilising her transformative powers to punish those who transgress against her.

In Hercules, however, Circe’s “power” over men is adapted further by representing her as a hyper-feminine seductress, whose sultry singing voice causes Hercules and the other male teenagers to vie for her attention. Through this blatant display of seduction, the episode conforms to the cultural traditions that have condemned her as a temptress. Circe as temptress is also present in more traditional adaptations, such as the film Ulysses directed by Mario Camerini (1954), the RAI TV mini-series The Odyssey directed by Mario Bava, Piero Schivazappa, and Franco Rossi (Bava et al. 1968), and the NBC TV mini-series The Odyssey directed by Andrei Konchalovsky (1997). In these adaptations, Circe’s power is shown in her actual transformation of Odysseus’ men, and in her seduction of Odysseus himself. As such, they reflect both upon the actual danger Circe poses via magic and the moral danger she poses as a seductress via sex, from which not even Odysseus is safe. The tradition of presenting Circe as a sexual harbinger of doom is not unique to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but as Judith Yarnall reflects, has been part of Circe’s cultural history since at least the fourth century B.C.E (Yarnall 1994). In The Simpsons, Circe is recognisable because the show appropriates these iconic images from the twentieth and early twenty-first century—which have permeated our cultural imagination of the sorceress—of Circe as a sensual and powerful woman who has transformative capabilities. Furthermore, it is, arguably, because of this legacy, that she can fail as a temptress in The Simpsons and still be recognised.

Including Circe rather than Calypso or Nausicaa in The Simpsons’ adaptation, furthermore, places her in direct opposition to Penelope as the only other woman who Odysseus interacts with. In the same way that Lindsey as the career woman is Marge’s foil in traditional episodes of The Simpsons, Lindsey as Circe is explicitly presented as Marge/Penelope’s opposite. The Simpsons, therefore, mobilises this binary by satirising the emphasis contemporary films and TV shows place on the cultural memory of Penelope as the “good wife”, by explicitly comparing her to Odysseus’ other women, particularly Circe. Camerini’s Ulysses, for example, visually observes Penelope and Circe’s unique roles as literary mirrors through its unique double-casting of Silvana Mangano as both women. As Joanna Paul remarks, double-casting Mangano addresses complex themes of gender within Homer’s Odyssey, by simultaneously ‘moving towards a sense of Penelope and Circe as one and the same: the doubled object of desire for Ulysses’, and demonstrating ‘a diversity of female experience and behaviour’ (Paul 2013, p. 157). Paul continues, ‘Rather than seeing the archetypal Penelope and Circe [in Ulysses] as achieving holistic unity within Mangano, we could see them persisting as different, irreconcilable facets of woman:’ the Madonna and the whore, or the “faithful wife” and the “other woman” (Paul 2013, p. 157). Konchalovsky’s (1997) adaptation similarly emphasises Circe’s (Bernadette Peters) role as the “other woman” by having Odysseus (Armand Assante) dream of Penelope (Greta Scacchi), whilst he lays in bed with Circe. The mini-series contrasts soft images of playful, marital bliss with the hypersexual intensity of Circe’s palace, as Odysseus’ men are served by Circe’s women. Konchalovsky’s Circe remarks, ‘you lie with me, yet you think of your wife’, to which Odysseus confirms that whilst he shared a bed and flesh with another woman, his mind remains on his wife and home. In Konchalovsky’s adaptation, Odysseus unknowingly stays at Circe’s palace for 5 years but despite Circe’s powerful seduction, his thoughts (if nothing else) remain faithful to the memory of his wife. Circe, outraged, tells Odysseus to consider if his ‘wife’s memory is as strong as [his] or if she has found another partner’. Of course, Penelope remains steadfast and Circe’s role, then, is to emphasise the integrity of Odysseus’ marriage. Overall, these traditional adaptations of the Odyssey have typically been hero-led, focusing on masculine narratives of triumph, whilst simultaneously reducing Penelope’s and Circe’s roles as “wife” and “temptress”, and fortifying patriarchal attitudes towards gender roles. That is not to say that these interpretations are wrong (indeed, they are typically regarded as faithful contributions) or uncreative, but they are reductive in their representation of women, as they favour androcentric adventure narratives.

Whilst there has been attempts in film to make Penelope more interesting by subverting her traditional role as a faithful wife, these changes appear largely superficial as the screen adaptations remain fundamentally dependent on reductive, and often sexist, gendered tropes and ideologies. For instance, Hall recalls the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?—which contains a ‘more open-minded and ideologically subversive’ Penelope than in any of the other examples discussed in her essay (Hall 2013, p. 183). The Coen brothers’ Penelope, Penny Wharvey-McGill (Holly Hunter), is, first and foremost, unfaithful: when Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) is reunited with Penny, she is holding a baby, who he does not recognise, and is planning to marry Vernon T. Waldrip (Ray McKinnon) to attain a more secure lifestyle for herself and her children. Penny is also, noticeably, angry at her ex-husband’s abandonment of her, having divorced him and informing her daughters that he had been hit by a train to retain a sense of respectability. She publicly denounces that Everett is her husband and allows her fiancé to fight him. Penny is rightfully upset at Everett, and given the context of the Great Depression, it is understandable that she would seek stability in his absence. Despite this, the audience is encouraged to feel empathy towards Everett as the failed hero. In O Brother, Everett must convince Penny to remarry him, but in succeeding, faces ‘a life being bossed around’ by Penny (Hall 2013, p. 184). As Janice Siegal contemplates, ‘While their daughters are literally tied together with a string, Penny has Everett on an even tighter leash. Has Everett exchanged one kind of confinement for another?’ (Siegel 2007, p. 242). Everett, nevertheless, appears content with his new confinement, unlike Penny, who ‘needs the symbol of their love—her wedding band—back, too’ (Siegel 2007, p. 242). The film’s conclusion then, Hall argues, is ‘suspended vertiginously between empowering [Penny] as a female and playing along with the pernicious sexist stereotype of the hen-pecking wife’ (Hall 2013, p. 184). I would add to Hall’s statement that this version of Penelope is more subversive, but only to the extent that she does not fully conform to the traditional narrative of fidelity. Overall, Penny still functions as a caricature (‘the hen-pecking wife’) that criticises women’s assertiveness as cold-hearted and shrewish and as such, her role remains, unfortunately, conservative.

We see a similar defaulting to tired stereotypes with Circe; indeed, by amalgamating Circe’s role with the sirens, O Brother neglects Circe’s own complexity in the Odyssey, whereby she is both powerful and magnanimous. In O Brother, the sirens are three women (Mia Tate, Musetta Vander, and Christy Taylor), who lure Everett, Delmar O’Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson), and Pete (John Turturro) towards them with their singing and drug the men with alcohol until they lose consciousness. When the men wake up, Delmar believes that the women turned Pete into a toad, stating ‘they loved him up and turned him into a horny toad’. Circe/the sirens, as such, are established as temptresses or femme fatales. The men take pleasure in looking at (and listening to) them, they are attractive Objects displayed for the male gaze; but they are dangerous because they use their physicality to disrupt the men’s journey. The film, therefore, perpetuates a sexist narrative whereby women are expected to be sexually available to men, but are concurrently criticised or demonised for their perceived promiscuity. In comparing Penny and Circe/the sirens’ roles in this adaptation, the representation of Homer’s women only looks bleaker for Everitt, as neither woman is necessarily presented as a safe Object for the male hero. Indeed, with Penny, Everitt is a victim of oppression—the “henpecked” husband—meanwhile, with Circe/the sirens, he is a victim of sex and lust. Through the example of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, it becomes more apparent that screen adaptations of the Odyssey remain largely conservative productions, as they fail to recognise Penelope’s and Circe’s potentiality as meaningful facilitators of plot.

Pete’s “transformation” into a toad rather than a pig, meanwhile, aligns the three women more clearly to more conventional conceptions of witchcraft. Traditionally, it was believed that witches kept small animals, like toads, as familiars. As Helen Parish writes, ‘by the seventeenth century, lurid details of the interactions between a witch and a familiar had become a commonplace in English witch trials and the popular print literature that accompanied them’ (Parish 2019, p. 5). In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, for example, in the opening scene, the Witches are called upon by their familiars, Graymalkin, a cat, and Paddock, a toad (Shakespeare 2008, p. 1.1.8-9). These familiars, Parish continues, were believed to ‘serve as a point of intersection between humanity and the devil’, and ‘often took a mundane form’ (Parish 2019, p. 6). As Parish observes, toads, in particular, were often linked to illness, having both ‘poisonous’ and ‘curative medicinal properties’; nevertheless, it was because of Shakespeare’s reference to Paddock, Parish argues, that ‘the use of the toad for demonic purposes was assured a cultural longevity’ (Parish 2019, p. 6). More recently, and as exampled in O Brother, the association between witches and amphibians is linked to transformation. To quote TV Tropes, ‘Almost the first thing that everybody knows […] about Wizards and Witches is that they turn people into amphibians’ (TV Tropes n.d.a).14 Circe’s identity in O Brother, then, is further displaced; not only is she one of three, but her identity as a witch is narrowed down to an (arguably) overused trope.

Notably, the Coen brothers have stated that neither of them had read the original text, ‘“Between the cast and us … Tim Nelson is the only one who’s actually read the Odyssey”’ (Romney 2000). It is possible to assume then that, much like The Simpsons, O Brother is reliant on perpetuating dominant tropes to ensure that the plot points of the Odyssey are maintained, despite the cultural and contextual changes made to the text overall. As Siegel contends, O Brother ‘consciously’ borrows from the Odyssey in its retelling: ‘The Coen brothers evoke and conflate Homeric plot lines, characterization techniques, and motifs to create an altogether unique and original text of their own’ (Siegel 2007, p. 218). Despite these changes, however, O Brother’s representation of women remains lacking as the film characters like Circe become oversimplified caricatures, who merely need to be recognised by audiences for the adaptation to succeed in telling its version of the Odyssey.

This failure to actualise Homer’s women beyond their most prominent tropes is also apparent in the more recent 2020 television series, Chilling Adventure of Sabrina. Certainly, whilst the series does demonstrate a positive deviation away from the “temptress/good wife” dichotomy in its portrayal of Circe (Lucie Guest), she is still characterised as a villain, who needs to be conquered by a better woman. For The Simpsons, the cartoon simultaneously presents Penelope and Circe within the conventional framework of “wife” and “temptress”, whilst also dismantling tradition and stereotype through parody. The Simpsons’ version of Penelope, for example, is purposefully stagnant in her simplicity. When Penelope relents to remarrying, there is no real narratorial conflict; her decision to remarry is not regarded as an act of infidelity, but a long-coming acceptance of her fate as a woman in Ancient Greece. She is reminiscent of Konchalovsky’s Penelope—whom Hall describes as a ‘dismal portrayal of one of antiquity’s most famous heroines’ because of her lack of personality (Hall 2013, p. 165). Nevertheless, when Homer/Odysseus attempts to criticise Marge/Penelope for “nagging” him, she is not villainised like Penny; instead, the trope is inverted to reflect on Homer/Odysseus’ failings as a husband. Lindsey/Circe, meanwhile, is unsuccessful as both a temptress and an antagonist, and thus disrupts Circean interpretations that have exalted a construction of Circe as the dangerous “other woman”. Again, it is Homer/Odysseus who is criticised, this time for his lack of self-control.

Overall, by means of satire, The Simpsons reflects upon the social limitations of gendered roles placed upon women and points out the everyday sexism that pervades traditional media. Beyond this, however, The Simpsons does not challenge our expectations for Penelope and Circe, but rather offers a conservative endorsement of female gender binaries. As discussed, in The Simpsons, criticism of the Odyssey narrative falls more obviously on Homer/Odysseus as a failed husband and hero. Marge/Penelope and Lindsey/Circe, in comparison, continue to fulfil diminutive roles, and changes that occur to them only transpire because of Homer/Odysseus’ own incompetence. In the context of other screen adaptations, the show subsequently encapsulates the cultural idea of the Odyssey as an adventure narrative centred around Odysseus, rather than adapt the Odyssey itself—which, Hall aptly points out, demonstrates a significant interest in the gendered tensions between men and women (Hall 2008, p. 190). The Simpsons, therefore, is a good example of the way in which twentieth and early twenty-first century screen adaptations have predominantly adapted but not updated women’s roles in the cultural perception of the Odyssey, for whilst the narratives and contexts of the adaptations may change, screen adaptations frequently depend upon the same tired stereotypes that have plagued Penelope’s and Circe’s interpretation onscreen.

4. Conclusions

To conclude, the Odyssey does allow for more conscientious and multifaceted interpretations of Homer’s women. Such creativity is demonstrated not only in the feminist academic research discussed in this paper, but in women’s writing. For example, in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (Atwood 2005), Penelope maintains the same cunning as her Odyssean counterpart, but she is also ‘arrogant, vain, insecure, unsympathetic and sexually possessive’ (Hall 2008, p. 126). Whilst offering a decidedly cynical retelling of the Odyssey, Atwood’s Penelope is given the agency and space to explore the workings of the female psyche under the pressures of patriarchal influence (see Brown 2012; Neethling 2015). Marie Brennan’s short story ‘Daughter of Necessity’ (Brennan 2014), comparatively, examines Penelope’s weaving as an act of storytelling, as the heroine attempts to craft a future wherein she will find contentment if not happiness. In Claire North’s Ithaca and House of Odysseus (North 2022, 2023), meanwhile, Penelope acknowledges the expectations placed upon her by patriarchy, and performs towards them to disguise the true extent of her political influence. And in Madeline Miller’s novel Circe (Miller 2018), context is given to Circe’s actions in the Odyssey to demonstrate that her transformation of the sailors into pigs was not, to quote Barbara Goff, ‘unmotivated […] but rather links explicitly to the burden of violence that women have disproportionately borne in history’ (Goff 2022, p. 4). Notably, each of these texts respond to the cultural memories that have long dominated Penelope’s and Circe’s representational legacy to contend with the ideologies that have historically minimised women to stereotypes of womanhood.

In visual mediums like film and television—which have a much wider audience outreach—however, there has yet to be a version of Penelope or Circe who has equalled the complexity of Homer’s women despite, as Hall aptly points out, the widely acknowledged ‘feminist reassessment’ of the Odyssey ‘in contexts other than the movie industry’ (Hall 2013, p. 171).15 With HBO Max buying the production rights for Miller’s Circe and ordering an eight-part series, there is hope that a more nuanced version of Homer’s women will come to screen (Andreeva 2019). The series adaptation, however, has yet to develop beyond its initial announcement in 2019. In comparison, the upcoming film, The Return (directed by Uberto Pasolini) was announced in 2022, and the film company Bleeker Street is scheduling a 2024 date (Goldbart 2022; Lodderhose 2023). Starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, The Return is described as ‘a “gritty retelling” of the timeless story of Odysseus’ return home from war’, with Odysseus (Fiennes) washing up on the shores of Ithaca, to find Penelope (Binoche) a prisoner in her own home (Goldbart 2022). For the most part, the film’s synopsis focuses on Odysseus as a scarred war hero and, again, is a male-focused text. There is, nevertheless, space to develop upon Penelope’s role in Odysseus’ return home beyond her fidelity and, hopefully, this is reflected in Pasolini’s adaptation. Until then, screen adaptations of the Odyssey have demonstrated a deep dependency upon one-dimensional character tropes in the construction of their narratives. These tropes have influenced not only what information is disseminated about Penelope and Circe, but also how we identify the two women onscreen. And, whilst they have, in part, proved useful in ensuring Penelope’s and Circe’s recognisability and cultural longevity, by not expanding upon their roles and challenging the reductive tropes that have become associated with them, screen adaptations fail to acknowledge the Odyssey’s ability to transform and adapt towards feminist narratives of female ambition, creativity, and intellect.