>But many students, scholars, and general readers want even more from this literary character: they want her to fit the ideal of an empowered woman. It is comforting to subscribe to the notion—as Daniel Mendelsohn does in his recently published memoir, “An Odyssey,” and as Robert Fagles does, in his translation of the poem—that the marriage between Odysseus and Penelope is a partnership of intellectual equals, based on true love and a shared outlook on life. Odysseus speaks, in Homer’s poem, of the ideal of like-mindedness (homophrosyne) in marriage.

The modern impulse to impose its cultural norms upon the past is deeply upsetting. Its a sign of a frail, unsure, and declining culture.