Character
Penelope
Odysseus's wife, and his match in patience and cunning. For three years she held the suitors off by weaving a shroud for her father-in-law and picking the day's work out again every night, and when a maid betrayed the trick she went on stalling by other means. She is the one who proposes the contest of the bow, and the one who tests her husband when he finally stands in front of her — with a question about their bed that no impostor could answer.