Penelope’s Bones

Homeric women take center stage in this week's review, as a combination of literary and archaeological research spotlights women in Bronze Age Greece.

Posted on December 1, 2025 in Reviews of the Month

Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It

Hauser, Emily. Chicago, 2025
496p bibl index, 9780226839684 $30.00, 9780226839691

In this eloquent book, Hauser (Univ. of Exeter, England) aims to put the experiences of Homeric women and goddesses center stage, countering the silence imposed on them by the epics. This is needed, she states, to address the “fundamental incompatibility between the claim the epics make that women don’t matter, and the fact that in every case they are essential to the story and the myth” (p. 5). Great stories are not meant to be told about men’s adventures alone; rather, the female characters should be viewed as independent protagonists of their own stories. Taking an innovative approach, Hauser engages with pathbreaking scientific techniques in addition to textual analysis and literary criticism to let these women’s silences “speak.” The breadth of the scientific research, including ancient DNA analysis and radiocarbon dating of archaeological discoveries, is impressive. Based on data, which she admits are sometimes fragmentary, Hauser develops wide-reaching narratives exploring late Bronze Age history, attempting to bring Homer’s women to life. The coda presents a “new history” of Aegea, after whom, Hauser claims, the Aegean Sea was named—not after Theseus’s father Aegeus.

Summing Up: Essential. Researchers and faculty.
Reviewer: H. M. Roisman, emerita, Colby College
Interdisciplinary Subjects: Classical Studies, Women’s & Gender Studies
Subject: Humanities – Language & Literature – Classical
Choice Issue: Dec 2025

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