Dr. Emily Hauser
speaker
1,990 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 26 Jul
Dr. Emily Hauser’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Well, you know, she basically says she wishes that it were true, but she's not sure if she can believe anymore that Odysseus is going to come home.
And now this is the point where we're sort of hanging in uncertainty as the audience.
We're not knowing, well, does Penelope actually even realise that she's sitting right opposite her husband?
And at this kind of incredible point of narrative tension, she decides to set a contest for her hand in marriage.
Well, is it the hope that he will return or is it the fact that actually she's been faced up with Odysseus giving her this prediction that Odysseus will come home?
And she just absolutely just says, well, actually, no, I don't believe it.
It can't happen.
Maybe she's completely given up.
We don't know.
But it is rather brilliant that it happens at the time that Odysseus is in the palace and he is right there ready to go.
And she sets up this contest.
Well, we've had a lot of debate about this in scholarship about what exactly is happening.
But what she does is she sets up a row of axes.
And in that row of axes, there are at some point some holes.
Now, probably this is somewhere around either the socket or it's somewhere kind of in the centre of the axe.
We don't need to be too specific about it, but there are some holes.
At the same time, Odysseus has a bow, a really kind of old heroic style bow that only he used to be able to string.
You had to be really, really strong to be able to string these old bows.
And so she's saying that whoever will be able to string his bow and will be able to shoot an arrow through those axes, through those holes, will be her husband.
Exactly.
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