Homer would have been perfectly justified in focusing exclusively on men—it is actually allowed, in case we’ve forgotten, to tell stories about men and be interested first and foremost in men. That is still legal in all fifty states and parts of Europe. But as it happens the Odyssey, of all classic texts, can fairly be described as obsessed with different kinds of women, with their psychology, their subjectivity, the ethics of their actions and their roles in world affairs. Not only is the whole plot occasioned, as many have noted, by the decisions of the woman *that Lupita herself is playing*, it’s also driven by Odysseus’s devotion to his wife, Penelope, who shows up before he does in the plot and whose unique personality is the whole reason he can’t just give up his journey home. He is the most famous wife guy in history. In the very first sequence where Odysseus speaks, the goddess Calypso is exasperated that he won’t just give up already and let her make him immortal, which by any objective measure is a better deal than schlepping back home through *yet more* storms, loss, sleeplessness, violence, and agony. He replies that yes, by all accounts no mortal woman can hold a candle to a goddess, but Penelope is *his* wife, and he is willing to leave the bliss of the divine bed specifically because of *the person that Penelope is* and what she means to him. In other words the theme and focus of the poem, set up quite explicitly by Homer at the outset of the hero’s journey, is the particular uniqueness of Penelope as a character: *her* virtues, *her* wits, the match she makes for Odysseus and everything their shared history means to him and to her. Not to mention that of course this is all given texture by being set against the really quite astonishing number of *other* female characters and the rounded humanity (or deity) they present. Besides Calypso, Helen, and Penelope there’s Athena, the terrifyingly relentless and inscrutable power upon whom both Odysseus and his son Telemachus depend to achieve their aims. Hera, the jilted codependent, Eurycleia, the devoted model of resolve and care, Arete, the canny power behind the throne of Phaeacia, Circe, the scheming enchantress, and Clytemnestra, whose negative example as an unfaithful wife obsesses almost every character, serving as the foil and anti-type to Penelope’s heroic patience. I haven’t even come close to exhausting the list. Then there’s the Iliad, which despite taking place very much in a man’s world still gives us unforgettable women: Andromache, tragic hostage of fortune, Hecuba, regal model of dignity in disaster, Thetis, formidable tiger mom, Aphrodite, petty princess of the gods…the poem closes with women’s words, words of lament for the fallen hero Hector. I maintain that Lupita is a hugely talented and very beautiful actress who has been treated to extremely unfair and ungentlemanly talk in the press cycle around this movie. Her silliness here doesn’t mean her performance will be bad. But it’s sad that she defaults into this Disney Princess press junket pablum. It speaks to the surpassing shallowness and boring ignorance of Hollywood’s fashionable assumptions. Homer is so, so much more than this.