. But Ulysses, the hero sitting amid these
corpses, is simply the Destroyer, the very picture and embodiment
thereof. Is there to be no positive result of such bloody work? Yes;
that is the next thing to be shown forth in the two following Books;
Ulysses is also the restorer, wherewith his career and this poem will
terminate.

_Book Twenty-third._ The essential fact of this Book is the reunion of
husband and wife after twenty years separation. The eternal nature of
the bond of the Family is thus asserted as strongly as is possible in
the world of Time. This is the deep institutional foundation upon which
the Odyssey reposes. Still the wife also has to be conquered, that is,
she has to be convinced that the beggar is her husband. All along we
have seen the struggle between her instinct and her intellect; her
understanding persists in thinking that Ulysses will not come back, yet
she dreams of his restoration, and she feels a strange sympathy with
the old man in rags. Thus the two opposing elements of female nature
have been in a conflict with each other; her instinct tries to surge
over her intellect, but does not succeed; she demands the complete test
of identity and gets it in the present Book. The old nurse, her son,
and finally Ulysses himself become impatient with her delay and her
circumspection, still she holds out against them all, though she has,
too, her own inner emotions to combat. The gradual unfolding of this
scene to the point of recognition must be pronounced a masterpiece of
character evolution.

The book may be divided into two portions--before and after the
Recognition, which culminates when Penelope accepts the test of the
secret bed which was once made by Ulysses.

I. The movement up to the Recognition shows Penelope undergoing a
double pressure, from without and from within. Yet it shows too a
corresponding double resistance on her part. First Eurycleia goes to
her chamber, and tells her in great glee that the Suitors are slain and
her husband has returned. She can accept the slaughter of the Suitors,
that could have been done by some God, angry at their injustice; but
she will not believe that Ulysses is really in the palace. The nurse
cries out: "Truly thou hast ever had a disbelieving mind," and then
tells of the scar. Still incredulous; but she goes down to the court,
and there sees Ulysses in his rags. No sufficient proof yet, though she
has a strange inner struggle not to run up to him that