Women as the Honor-Currency: An Anthropological Understanding of Female Sexual Virtue in the Homeric Epic

This paper examines the role of female sexual virtue in the Homeric epics through the concept of “honor-currency.” It argues that women’s chastity and marital loyalty attain social value through reputation. The preservation, contestation, and violation of this reputation can affect male prestige and authority and shape the longer-term stability of households and kinship relations. Based on close readings of key scenes from the Iliad and the Odyssey, including marriage negotiations, war-prize disputes, Penelope’s strategies of delay, Nausicaa’s careful self-presentation, and the contrasting figures of Helen and Clytemnestra, the analysis shows that Homeric women are consequential yet constrained agents within systems of honor and exchange. Drawing on anthropological frameworks of honor and shame alongside classical scholarship on gender and marriage, the paper explains how female sexual virtue shapes public transactions, household continuity, and collective memory.