| Sumario: | The paper examines the depiction of Penelope, the faithful wife in Homer’s Odyssey, in some modern novels from different parts of the world. A brief analysis of Ovid’s hint at a more complex woman in the Heroides is followed by discussion of the versions of Jean Giono, Inge Merkel, Penelope Lively, Margaret Atwood and Njabulo Ndebele’s The Cry of Winnie Mandela. Whereas the epic focuses on the eponymous hero, these works, which all draw on the Odyssey, move Penelope to the foreground and the adventure story becomes the backdrop for a different kind of adventure that is played out in the marital home. It is notable that the modern novels concentrate on the psychology of the woman and on the marriage relationship and make the epic couple a paradigm for marriage in the modern world.
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