form a basis for their relationship, but Penelope is too young and inexperienced as yet to question whether her husband is telling her true stories.

As the months go by, the stories do, too. Penelope struggles to adjust to her new life in Ithaca, yet she enjoys her time with Odysseus, especially the stories he tells her as they lie together in bed. He speaks of himself, of

his hunting exploits, and his looting expeditions, and his special bow that nobody but he could string, and how he'd always been favoured by the goddess Athene because of his inventive mind and his skill at disguises and stratagems (84).

Odysseus, ever the performer and flattered by his young bride's attention, narrates events old and new, even speaking of the time Penelope's cousin Helen was captured by Theseus and Peirithous of Athens. Here Penelope finally starts to realize that stories tend to sound a bit different depending on who is telling them. She has heard Helen's story before, from her cousin, and Helen's version of the event was, of course, quite different.

Penelope's opinion of stories shifts greatly as the years pass and Odysseus fails to return home from the Trojan War. All she hears of her husband now are stories. Some are quite remarkable, especially those concerning the war itself. She marvels at Odysseus's idea of the wooden horse. Others are not nearly so flattering. Instead of fighting the one-eyed Cyclops, as some recount, Odysseus merely defeated a one-eyed tavern keeper. Instead of being eaten by cannibals, Odysseus's men tore each other to pieces in a brawl. Instead of Odysseus enjoying the hospitality of a goddess, he was merely spending his time at “an expensive whorehouse” (148).

Which stories are true and which are not? Penelope cannot tell, and she becomes rather cynical toward stories in general. She is no longer an innocent girl but a woman beset by the difficulties of managing her husband's estate in his absence and by the obnoxious “attentions” of her many suitors, who seem bent on eating her out of house and home. Stories are not nearly as enjoyable as they once were.

It is no wonder, then, that by the time Odysseus returns home, Penelope is a wise woman who has little use for stories. She discounts the old songs that claim a mere coincidence between Odysseus's arrival in the disguise of a beggar and the bow and arrow contest that the Suitors had to pass to win Penelope's hand. There is no coincidence; Penelope, who recognized Odysseus immediately, planned the whole thing (136). She also firmly denies the “slanderous gossip” that claims she slept with one, or several, or all of the auitors and that her husband failed to reveal himself to her because he distrusted her (140-41). These rumors, these stories, she proclaims, are “entirely groundless,” and she must set the record straight (140). So much for stories!

Yet when the suitors are all dead and Odysseus and Penelope are alone together, they resume their “old habits of story-telling” (164). Odysseus tells his wife of his many adventures, “the nobler versions, with the monsters and the goddesses,” Penelope notes a just bit cynically, “rather than the more sordid ones with the innkeepers and the whores” (164). Penelope, in turn, tells her husband all about

my deceitful encouragings of the Suitors, and the skillful ways in which I'd misdirected them and led them on and played them off against one another (164).

The two admire each other's stories, but things are rather different now. “The two of us were—by our own admission—proficient and shameless liars of long standing,” Penelope remarks. “It's a wonder either one of us believed a word the other said. But we did. Or so we told each other” (165). Penelope no longer believes every story that flows from her husband's mouth, and perhaps he doesn't believe her tales either. Eventually Odysseus heads out on further adventures, trying to made amends for his deeds, he tells his wife. “It was a likely story,” says Penelope. “But then, all of his stories were likely” (165). Likely perhaps, but true? Penelope truly doubts it.