#and therefore is also the rare moment of hostility and potential violence between kinsmen in homer

[finelythreadedsky]

i've been reading a lot about fundamental differences between homer and tragedy and one interesting thing is the preoccupation of tragedy with the conflicts of women's loyalties to their natal and marital families, which manifests in so many tragedies putting women in situations where they are forced to choose sides in conflicts between their husbands/fathers/brothers/sons (eg medea chooses her husband over her father and brother, antigone chooses her brother over her future husband and potential children, procne chooses her sister and father over her husband and son, creusa remains dedicated to her father and his lineage instead of her husband and his). women are supposed to forge chains between men by their marriages and tragedies are so often interested in what happens to those connecting links when things go sour.

and that's just totally absent in homer, there's never any tension between icarius and odysseus or between eetion and the house of priam or between autolycus and laertes or between tyndareus and either paris or menelaus and agamemnon. most of the time either father-in-law or son-in-law is totally absent from the narrative. there's nothing that would put a woman in the position of mediating between the family she was born into and the family she married into.

but you know who in homer does experience this tension between loyalty to natal and marital families? hector. in iliad 6 andromache begs him to adopt a more defensive strategy because she and their son will be totally lost if he dies, and hector speaks of having to fight for his father's glory and his own. andromache and astyanax will suffer if hector dies well and bravely fighting for a lost cause, but priam will benefit. hector even acknowledges that after troy's fall it will be andromache who suffers most, not priam or hecuba-- for them the memory of hector's glory will be a consolation, while for her it will only be more pain. hector is torn between his father and his wife, the family he was born into and the family he has created through marriage.