Moravia’s ‘Contempt’ and Ulysses’ Refusal to Return to Penelope

The Italian writer Alberto Moravia (1907-90) who wrote most of his famous works during the 50s was my discovery of the month. I’m onto his fourth book and have been floored by his excavation of the interior worlds of his characters and the existential angst that he confronts in his writings.

In ‘Contempt’, a scriptwriter ends up having a simple misunderstanding with his wife that eventually ends up into mutual alieanation. Moravia shows how love can disappear without drama or infidelity, but simply through silence, ego, and unspoken resentment—until contempt replaces intimacy. The whole story unfolds in the backdrop of a movie being made that’s based on Homer’s Odyssey.

Now, Moravia’s genius lay in juxtaposing his narrative with his own interpretation of the Odyssey. According to him, the main reason for Ulysses to join the War was to get away from Penelope. And the fact that he took ten years to return back to his wife was just his dread of getting back to her. He wonders aloud if Penelope’s contempt for Ulysses was what killed their love and made him a wanderer.

“Ulysses, in his subconscious mind, does not wish to return to Ithaca because in reality his relations with Penelope are unsatisfactory. That’s the reason, Molteni. And these relations had been unsatisfactory even before the departure of Ulysses to the war…in fact really Ulysses had gone off to the war because he was unhappy at home…and he was unhappy at home precisely because of his unsatisfactory relations with his wife!”

“If his relations with Penelope had been good, Ulysses would not have gone off to the war. Ulysses was not a swaggerer or a warmonger. Ulysses was a prudent, wise, wary kind of man. If his relations with his wife had been good, Ulysses, simply in order to prove to Menelaus that he supported him, would perhaps just have sent an expeditionary force under the command of some man he trusted…instead of which he went off himself, taking advantage of the war to leave home and thus escape from his wife.” “Very logical.” “Very psychological,

And Moravia explains Penelope’s contempt:

The suitors, then, have been in love with Penelope since before the Trojan War…and, being in love, they shower presents upon her, according to Greek custom. Penelope, being proud and dignified, in the antique manner, would like to refuse their presents, would, above all things, like her husband to turn the suitors out. But Ulysses, for some reason that we don’t know but that we shall easily find, does not wish to offend the suitors. As a reasonable man, he does not attach much importance to their courting of his wife, since he knows she is faithful; nor does he attribute much significance to their gifts, which perhaps do not really displease him at all. Remember that all Greeks were greedy for presents, Molteni. Naturally Ulysses does not for a moment advise Penelope to yield to the suitors’ desires, but merely not to offend them because he does not consider it worth while. Ulysses wants a quiet life, and he hates scandals. Penelope, who was expecting anything rather than this passive attitude on Ulysses’ part, is disgusted, almost incredulous. She protests, she rebels…but Ulysses is not to be shaken, there seems to him no cause for indignation…so he again advises Penelope to accept the presents, to behave kindly—what does it cost her, after all? And Penelope, in the end, follows her husband’s advice…but at the same time conceives a deep contempt for him…She feels she no longer loves him, and tells him so…Ulysses then realizes, too late, that, by his prudence, he has destroyed Penelope’s love. Ulysses then tries to remedy matters, to win his wife back again, but he is unsuccessful. His life at Ithaca becomes a hell. Finally, in desperation, he seizes the opportunity of the Trojan War to leave home. After seven years the war ends and he puts to sea again to return to Ithaca, but he knows he is awaited at home by a woman who no longer loves him, who, in fact, despises him, and therefore, unconsciously he welcomes any excuse for putting off this unpleasant, this dreaded, return…and yet, sooner or later, return he must. But, on his return, the same thing happens to him as happened to the cavalier in the legend of the dragon—do you remember, Molteni? The princess demanded that the cavalier should kill the dragon if he wished to be worthy of her love, so the cavalier killed the dragon and then the princess loved him. In the same way Penelope, at Ulysses’ return, after proving that she had been faithful to him, gave him to understand that her faithfulness did not mean love but merely virtue: she would recover her love for him on one, and only one, condition—that he would slay the suitors. Ulysses, as we know, was not in the least bloodthirsty or vindictive; he would perhaps have preferred to dismiss the suitors by gentler means, by persuasion. But this time he made up his mind, knowing, in fact, that upon killing of the suitors depends the esteem of Penelope and consequently her love also. So he kills them. Then, and only then, does Penelope cease to despise him, only then does she love him again. And so Ulysses and Penelope are again in love, after all those years of separation, and they celebrate their true marriage—their ‘Bluthochzeit,’ their blood-marriage. Well, do you understand, Molteni? Now to sum up! Point one: Penelope despises Ulysses for not having reacted like a man, like a husband, and like a king, to the indiscreet behavior of the suitors. Point two: her contempt causes the departure of Ulysses to the Trojan War. Point three: Ulysses, knowing that he is awaited at home by a woman who despises him, delays his return as long as he can. Point four: in order to regain Penelope’s esteem and love, Ulysses slays the suitors. Do you understand, Molteni?”

The story ends tragically. Jean-Luc Godard adapted the book into a movie in 1963 – Le Mépris with the stunning Brigitte Bardot playing the lead. The movie was nowhere close to the book. I mean, how on earth can someone bring lines like these alive on the screen:

In that embrace, in fact, consummated on that dirty floor, in the chilly gloom of the empty flat, she was giving herself, so I felt, to the giver of the home, not the husband. And those bare, echoing rooms, still smelling of paint and fresh plaster, had stirred something in the innermost recesses of her heart that no caress of mine, hitherto, had ever had the power to awaken.

And another fun fact that I discovered:

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