Meaning & Analysis
Literally, this refers to the weaving that Penelope, wife of Odysseus in Greek myth, would undo each night after weaving by day, so as to delay remarriage while waiting for Odysseus’s return.
Insights
Futile Labor
The proverb symbolizes labor that is constantly undone—work without result, where each advance is canceled out by a setback or reversal.
Procrastination and Delay
It can represent strategies of postponement or avoidance, especially when progress is deliberately sabotaged or reversed to evade an unwanted outcome.
Illusory Progress
The web is also a metaphor for efforts that seem productive but, because they are repeatedly undone, never come to fruition—often due to external pressures or one’s own indecision.
Historical Symbolism
Penelope’s web is a classical emblem of patience, cunning, and the paradox of endless effort. In Renaissance and early modern literature, it became shorthand for vain toil or shrewd delay—especially when one’s efforts are cyclically undone.
Cultural Resonance
Referenced by Shakespeare and many others, the image recurs in moral, literary, and everyday contexts to characterize fruitless work, bureaucratic red tape, or tasks that never reach completion. Its endurance reflects the universal experience of wasted or reversible labor.
Psychological Dimensions
On a psychological level, Penelope’s web can symbolize indecision, the fear of endings, or an unconscious wish to avoid resolution. It also expresses frustration with situations where effort is neutralized or sabotaged, whether by self or circumstance.
Rhetorical Devices
Allusion
The phrase is a direct allusion to the Homeric myth, carrying rich literary and cultural associations that deepen its meaning.
Metaphor
The web itself serves as a metaphor for cycles of activity and reversal, vividly encapsulating the experience of wasted or undone effort.
Irony
There is a strong irony in the deliberate act of unweaving, as it turns purposeful labor into an act of negation.
Transcription
Quotations
Penelopes telam retexere, signifieth to doo and vndoo, to take much labour in vayn.
Penelopes telam texere .. A Prouerbe aptly applied to those which labour, and yet can see no fruite of their trauell, or paines taking.
If this be all you say, a fayre threed she hath sponne, For what she wrought all day, at night was all vndone.
His libertie is in an howers while, Both done and vndone like Penelope's web.
Examples teach soonest .. It is a long way by Preceptes, a short by Examples: The force of a hundred good Sermons, is lost by one enormitie: so easie is it to weaue Penelopes webbe.
He winds up his thoughts often, and as often unwinds them; Penelope's web thrives faster.
Shakespeare Citations
You would be another Penelope. Yet, they say, all the yarn she spun in Ulysses’ absence did but fill Ithaca full of moths.
Cross References
- See OTTO, no. 1379.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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