Penelope (myth)

   In Greek legend, Penelope was the wife of Ulysses and mother of Telem­achus, who was but an infant when his father left home for Troy. During the ten years' siege and the years that followed before Ulysses reached home again, Penel­ope, who was a beautiful woman, had many suitors. They tried to persuade her that her husband was dead. Penelope promised to choose a husband as soon as she had finished the weaving of a web to be used for the funeral canopy of Laertes, her husband's father.
   She worked at the web each day, but at night unraveled all she had woven. Thus Penelope's web has become proverbial as a thing constantly in process of construc­tion, but never completed.