Sonja and Vanessa play around with the odyssey concept and ask if the story 40-something Janie Crawford tells her BFF, Pheoby, in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God fits the definition of an Odyssey…and if maybe that’s even what Hurston had in mind in her legendary first two paragraphs? Can following an unfamiliar dirt road be like the winds of the Aegean Sea tossing one into the unknown? Is an odyssey about where you or what you ultimately learn about yourself? Can marriages be battles? And what if the hot odyssey-sex involved is not with an strange, immortal witch but with the person you love most in the world? Spoiler alerts! So if you want to read the novel first and then go on this journey with us, Sonja and Vanessa are waiting for you by the gate with idea-bags packed!

Works referenced:

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd

In the seventh episode of IWAW’s Odyssey series, Sonja and Vanessa circle back to Penelope–home base of The Odyssey in so many ways–by reading and discussing Margaret Atwood’s brief, poetic, witty take on how Penelope really feels about her absent husband. Plus, Atwood gives voice to “the maidens,” a multiple murder that can’t be left off Odysseus’s hero resume. Spoiler Alert for Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad!

The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

Margaret Atwood's website

Can Odysseus even HAVE an Odyssey without female characters to help him, terrorize him, and sometimes both? Join Sonja and Vanessa as their guest, classics scholar Amy Meyers, dishes on Scylla, the Sirens, and the intimidating goddess, Athena. Like an arrow through a dozen axe holes lined up, Homer’s male hero shoots through the decidedly feminine architecture of his labyrinthian odyssey.

Sources mentioned:

The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles

The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer's Odyssey by Beth Cohen

Sonja takes Vanessa down a rabbit hole to the 12th century for a scandalous romance, starring a very learned woman named Heloise. If you’re tired of the passion ending at the altar, this episode’s for you: spicy letters, secluded country estates, lots of reading, divine and carnal love, and keeping passion lit–even in the face of late-in-life eunuchism. IWAW celebrates that love can be messy!

Letters of Abelard and Heloise by Pierre Bayle

Sonja and Vanessa visit Circe’s Island, both in the Odyssey and in Madeline Miller’s brilliant novel. For those keeping score: time with Calypso + Circe = 80% of Odysseus’s 10-year trip home is on Love Islands with gorgeous, immortal women. Vanessa quizzes Sonja on ancient Greek witchcraft and why women keep giving grown men baths, and Sonja, as always, knows a thing or two. Spoiler Alerts for Madeline Miller’s Circe!

Works referenced:
Circe by Madeline Miller

“Bias, She Wrote: The Gender Bias of the New York Times Bestseller List,” by Rosie Cima

“Patterns of Persecutions: ‘Witchcraft’ Trials in Ancient Athens,” by Esther Eidinow

Theogony by Hesiod

“Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” by Joan Scott
“Circe’s Etruscan Pharmaka: Reconsidering a Fragment of Aeschylean Elegy,” by Jessica Lightfoot

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

Sonja and Vanessa pop some popcorn and dive into Uberto Pasolini’s 2024 film,The Return.Who gets the spotlight more, Odysseus or Penelope? In terms of power, would we rather be poem Penelope or film Penelope? Is Telemachus even a little less whiny? Does Argos the dog get his moment? And although all the gods are cut from the script, how did they convince Athena, the goddess-of-glow-ups, to be 60-year old Ralph Fiennes' personal trainer?

Other books referenced in the episode:

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien

The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

We would love to hear your thoughts and questions! Please join us on Patreon, where you can subscribe for free or throw us some book money:patreon.com/InWalksaWoman. Also follow us on Spotify and on Instagram: @inwalksawoman.

What do we know about what real life would’ve been like for Penelope in the Odyssey—and for that matter what do we know about the lives of women in the Bronze age or classical era of ancient Greece? Join us as Vanessa’s non historical-brain tries to keep up with Sonja’s fine-tuned sense of history, along with IWAW’s first-ever guest, classics scholar, Dr. Heather Harwood.

This is the first in a five-episode series on women, goddesses, and monsters in the Odyssey and its retellings.