Penelope, although she is a woman and for this reason is seen as an inferior being or object, is an intelligent and shrewd person. As a woman, her role in the home would have been to supervise the maids and help them weave the cloth used in the house. She lulls the suitors into a false sense of security: "My lords, my suitors, now that the noble Odysseus is dead, curb your ardor, do not insist on this marriage until I have finished this work, so that the threads I have fabric may not be entirely wasted”' (p. 17) promising that, after finalizing the shroud, she would choose a suitor to marry, however, she never had any intention of completing such a shroud. The wise queen worked tirelessly on this for hours every day, but under the cover of night, the threads she had woven untied. At the end of the epic, her cunning once again shows its head. She devises a plot to put an end to the suitor's advances: ' . . . Whoever will draw the bow most easily and shoot an arrow through each of these twelve axes, with that man will I go...' (p. 278) with the perfect knowledge that her husband was the only one known to accomplish such a heroic act. She waits with a tenacious heart for a husband who may never arrive