PENELOPE'S ODYSSEY

This paper argues that as the author of the first letter of Ovids Heroides Penelope, in addition to expressing her wishes for her husband's return, takes on the role of Ulysses himself she goes to war, travels the seas and eventually comes home. She does so by manipulating the space of her story and wielding her letters as her surrogates. Contrary to her standard portrait, Penelope in the Heroides is a capable narrator, conscious of her mythological and literary tradition, who seeks to break away from her static role through the act of writing Ovid's Penelope structures her narrative to take it to Troy and then return to Ithaca on her own odyssey.