From ev23@umail.umd.edu Thu Feb 28 17:10:27 2002 Received: from mailscan3.cac.washington.edu (mailscan3.cac.washington.edu [140.142.32.15]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with SMTP id g211AOnJ168894 for ; Thu, 28 Feb 2002 17:10:25 -0800 Received: FROM mxu4.u.washington.edu BY mailscan3.cac.washington.edu ; Thu Feb 28 17:10:24 2002 -0800 Received: from umailsrv2.umd.edu (umailsrv2.umd.edu [128.8.10.76]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with ESMTP id g211AOIe018317 for ; Thu, 28 Feb 2002 17:10:24 -0800 Received: from umail.umd.edu (bay12-37.dial.umd.edu [128.8.21.37]) by umailsrv2.umd.edu (8.11.3/8.11.3) with ESMTP id g211AM905107 for ; Thu, 28 Feb 2002 20:10:22 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <3C7ED5AC.60A88376@umail.umd.edu> Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 20:13:16 -0500 From: Elizabeth Vandiver X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Nausikaa's laundry (was Re: ancient feminine hygiene) References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I have no answer for GL, but her question reminds me of something I've wondered about for quite some time. Many years ago now an undergraduate student at the Univ. of Georgia raised a point that made a great deal of sense to me, and I wonder if anyone has written along these lines--namely, that the laundry Nausikaa does in Odyssey VI includes (though it's clearly not limited to) clothes soiled with her first menstrual blood. In other words, this scene might reflect a kind of maturation ceremony at menarche. The student's idea was that *this* is why, when Nausikaa asks her father for the mules so she can go do the laundry, he understands that she is really thinking of her own marriage: So she spoke, but she was ashamed to speak of her joyful marriage to her dear father, but he understood all and answered, "I do not begrudge you the mules, child, nor anything else. So go, and the serving men will harness the wagon..." (Lattimore's translation, Od.VI.66-69) This idea strikes me as very sensible; certainly it would help explain why no-one (Alkinoos, Arete, or Nausikaa's serving-maids) considers it the least bit odd when a king's daughter suddenly goes off to do the laundry. Is there any scholarship suggesting a similar reading? Elizabeth Vandiver .