Women were always looked upon as inferior to males since the very beginning of time. This method, called patriarchy, was much displayed in Homer's Odyssey. The Odyssey favored the male specie, and viewed the men as more dominant than the females. For instance, Odysseus' wife, Penelope, had been probed by the suitors while Odysseus was gone. Penelope's son, Telemachus had left her and his homeland of Ithaca to go to try and find his long-lost father, Odysseus. There was also the thought that women were evil. The many thousands of years ago that The Odyssey took place in, was considered by many as a male-monopolized society.
             The duration of the time that Odysseus was gone, each of the suitors had been trying to make Penelope his wife. Although she had turned down each and every one of them, they had all forced her to sleep with them, and to take care of them. As Telemachus says, "Suitors plague my mother- against her will-/ sons of the very men who are your finest here!/ They'd sooner die than approach her father's house/ so Icarius himself might see to his daughter's bridal,/ hand her to whom he likes, whoever meets his fancy." (page 95). This patriarchal environment, was in other words males pursuing female. Telemachus had soon played a part in this patriarchal idea as well.
             Telemachus had decided to journey out to find his father, leaving his mama behind, and deciding what to do with her when she comes back (whether to marry another man or to stay as she is, wed to Odysseus). This asserts the legitimacy of patriarchy since he had enough power to do as he pleased, being a young man, to go and take a dangerous voyage out. "If I hear he's dead {Odysseus}, no longer among the living,/ then back I'll come to the native land I love,/ raise his grave-mound, build his honors high/ with the full funeral rites that he deserves-/ and give my mother to another
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