In Homer's account in The Odyssey, Penelope—wife of Odysseus and cousin of the beautiful Helen of Troy—is portrayed .. “The two of us were now proficient and shameless liars of long standing. .. The Penelopiad is another installment of the Canongate Myths Series. . Shelves: brace, mythology, just-one- book.
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Margaret Atwood returns with a shrewd, funny, and insightful retelling of the myth of Odysseus from the point of view of Penelope. The maids form a chanting and singing Chorus, which focuses on two questions that must pose themselves after any close reading of the Odyssey: What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? Read more Read less. Add all three to Cart Add all three to List. These items are shipped from and sold by different sellers.
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Conformed to the Image of His Son: Reconsidering Paul's Theology of Glory in Romans. Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Read reviews that mention margaret atwood point of view trojan war twelve maids cousin helen greek mythology helen of troy quick read handmaid tale hanged maids story of penelope son telemachus twenty years homer odyssey wife penelope tells the story twelve hanged high school odysseus and his wife chorus line. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. She looks beyond the famous stars of the narrative: Helen, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Penelope, and lets a chorus line of maids have their say.
She retells the story of their harsh lives, of their vulnerability. Many of them experience rape and abuse from the suitors that gather to court Penelope during the absence of her husband, and on returning home, Odysseus decides to kill them because they "slept with the enemy without his permission". It is a rare treat of tragicomedy when Penelope describes their fury in the Hades, after all characters involved in the drama have left the stage of the living.
The maids, demanding justice in an objective court, are left disappointed because the judge doesn't want to be "guilty of an anachronism".
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Don't we hear that quite often still? All those cases of sexual violence against women, justified with "different times, different customs". Is that a reason not to raise the issue at all? How can the times and customs ever change then? Those maids, singing in a choir of rage against the double standards of a patriarchal society, seem both ancient and prophetic at the same time. While they denounce the millennia of injustice and hypocrisy, they also become early members of the metoo movement, begging the audience of famous mythological stories to listen to the neglected minor characters as well.
Famous actresses of the caliber of Helen or Penelope may speak for themselves, but what about the powerless, poor girls in the background? The chambermaids, barmaids, nurses? Who speaks for those young women? Atwood does, in the slightly arrogant, bitter voice of privileged Penelope - a woman in power, but with her own share of frustrations, too clever for her own good, and in the eternal shadow of her barbie doll cousin Helen.
And what about Odysseus? Well, this is not the Odyssey, it is the Penelopiad, so he is acting backstage, evasive and hard to catch, a mere prerequisite for the lives of the women of Ithaca. Do I recommend this short novel? Yes, to those of you who love myths, and are well acquainted with Homer's take on the household drama in the palace of Ithaca as well as with the geopolitics of the time, involving the disastrous Trojan war and plenty of other local conflicts.
To see and value the slight changes Atwood made to the "common myth", one has to know where she is coming from. I would also suggest trying some of her major novels before choosing this thin volume, as it is quite different even though it is clearly a typical Atwood as well, to contradict myself in the last paragraph. Oh whatever, just read it and judge for yourselves whether she is guilty of anachronism or not. I'd say no, as her topic has never ceased to be contemporary.
I hope my children will grow up and look back to say that the kind of injustice she describes is a thing of the past. But chances are that The Handmaid's Tale will still be acted out in some places, and that the minor characters in the big plays will be treated with contempt by those who are famous enough to get away with anything. And we should chime in. View all 22 comments. Mar 25, Paromjit rated it really liked it Shelves: Margaret Atwood gives us a reworked reinterpretation of Homer's The Odyssey that lends itself rather well to our present day in its contemporary echoes of our MeToo movement today.
We have the abandoned for 20 years, but faithful Penelope learning to manage the court in the absence of her philandering husband. Numerous suitors come to court, Penelope commands the twelve maids, slaves in reality, to be used and abused, to deal with them. The inherently flawed Odysseus spent the first 10 years fig Margaret Atwood gives us a reworked reinterpretation of Homer's The Odyssey that lends itself rather well to our present day in its contemporary echoes of our MeToo movement today.
The inherently flawed Odysseus spent the first 10 years fighting the Trojan War, and the following 10 years having adventures, having a riotous time before finally returning to Ithaca. He is painted as a over-hyped, testerone fuelled, hypocrite, barely deserving of the saintly Penelope. Odysseus orders the twelve maids to be murdered, feeling they have betrayed him and left a stain on his sense of honour.
However, Penelope herself, overwhelmed by guilt at this heinous act, does not come out of this tale well. Atwood has each character give a defence of their behaviour from their own perspective, spinning the most positive picture possible in their efforts to redeem themselves. They have no wish to be held accountable or feel any sense of responsibility. This feminist focus on the little known twelve maids from Homer skirts around the periphery of the idea that these powerless women were asking for what they got and deserving of their harrowing fate.
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Atwood gives them a voice, in which they bitterly lay out their side of the story. When we see much of what happens to women and the treatment of them in society and social media, it begs the question whether much has changed from the ancient times retold by Atwood. This is a short, but darkly humorous, witty, poetic read that is thought provoking and entertaining.
Many thanks to Canongate for an ARC. View all 13 comments. Mar 16, Ana rated it really liked it Recommended to Ana by: Or so we told each other. The Penelopiad is a refreshing new spin on this old myth. View all 12 comments. Often I amuse myself by trying to imagine the ideas, conversations, or circumstances that led to the writing of certain books. For example, I think Philippa Gregory wrote The Other Boleyn Girl because she wanted to write a smutty romance novel disguised as history, Shakespeare probably wrote The Taming of the Shrew because someone bet him he couldn't write a play where domestic abuse is interpreted as matrimonial devotion, and Bette Green wrote Summer of My German Soldier specifically to torture Often I amuse myself by trying to imagine the ideas, conversations, or circumstances that led to the writing of certain books.
For example, I think Philippa Gregory wrote The Other Boleyn Girl because she wanted to write a smutty romance novel disguised as history, Shakespeare probably wrote The Taming of the Shrew because someone bet him he couldn't write a play where domestic abuse is interpreted as matrimonial devotion, and Bette Green wrote Summer of My German Soldier specifically to torture 10th-grade Madeline. In the case of The Penelopiad , I like to think that the idea for its creation came about in the mind of Margaret Atwood right after she read The Odyssey for what was probably the 10th time.
Probably in the original Greek, too. Anyway, I think something like this went on in Atwood's head just with a lot better vocabulary, of course: Okay, Homer, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to take your story and write in from Penelope's perspective, and instead of portraying Odysseus as a hero, I'm going to turn him into the jerkiest jerk who ever jerked.
And there will be tap-dancing maids. This book is the result, and I can practically hear Atwood cackling madly at her computer as she types the story. I went in with high expectations, wondering how Atwood will take the 'waiting widow' of The Odyssey and transform it into a full length novel. Turns out that she mostly indulges in recapitulating the bulk of the original with a few wild theories and speculations thrown in as supposed rumors that Penelope has gleaned in the after-life. Which brings me to how the story is constructed and this happens to be the high water mark for this novel.
Atwood starts with Penelope addressing us from the other side of River Styx , reaching us through the mysterious sounds of the night and the barks and hoots of unseen animals. Penelope has grown bold since her death and is no longer the meek woman we saw in the original but a bold one who doesn't mind speaking her mind and spilling a few uncomfortable beans. Penelope subjects all the popular characters of the odyssey to scrutiny but reserves a special attention for Odysseus , Telemachus and Helen.
She convinces us with case-by-case analysis that Odysseus was no hero - he was a lying and conniving manipulator of men who never uttered one truthful word in his life. She talks of rumors that told her of what his real adventures were, stripped of the trappings of myth. Telemachus becomes a petulant teenager full of rebellion against his mother and Helen becomes the ultimate shrew, seductress and a femme fatale of sorts. But the story that Atwood really wants to tell is not of Penelope, that story is hardly changed except to assert speculations on the original text whether Penelope really saw through Odysseus disguise or not.
What if she did? It hardly changed the story. The real twist, and the only reason to take up this book is to see Atwood's exploration and reinvention of the twelve maids who were killed by Odysseus in punishment for betraying him by sleeping with the suitors. These twelve girls are the Chorus in this book and appear every now and then playing a baroque accompaniment to the text and giving us new perspectives on their story.
This carries on until Penelope herself reveals to us that they were never betraying Odysseus, she had asked them herself to get acquainted with the suitors to get obtain information for her. They had never betrayed Odysseus or his kingdom. So their murder was just that - murder. This was Atwood's plot twist and her intended question was about the morality of this ' honor killing ' as she calls the hanging of the slaves, which, she confesses in the foreword, used to haunt her when she was young - ' Why were they killed?
In the end though, the reader hardly gets anything beyond these idle speculations and supplemental myths and small factoids like how Helen was really Penelope's cousin and that they have to eat flowers in Hades. Even the main point of the book, about the dead maids, too ignores the fact that Odysseus genuinely seems to believe that they betrayed him by helping the suitors in various ways and hence it becomes as question of misinformation than morality and the blame will fall back on the shoulders of Penelope herself, rendering this whole exercise moot.
Just go read the original again ; the short hops of imagination that Atwood has taken in this retelling can easily be overtaken by the leaps you might make yourself in a re-reading that you might treat yourself to on a leisurely sunday afternoon - and those will surely be more impressive as well as intellectually more rewarding.
The Penelopiad
View all 28 comments. View all 5 comments. This was so beautifully written. As someone who's fairly familiar with the myth of Penelope and Odysseus, it was quite fascinating to see how a modern-day writer would spin the story. Atwood did this brilliantly. I love stories that write from the perspective of the main character, especially when the said character is looking back in hindsight. This review contains spoilers. If you are allergic to them, please note, this is positively riddled with them. You should either take some epinephrine, or skip it altogether.
As a modern re-telling of the Odyssey, this proves an interesting example of why some things are best left alone, especially if you don't address the topic in a particularly fresh or inventive way. I feel the sting in that, even as I write it, but in truth, I don't see how Atwood moved the needle one bit in re-opening, or ev This review contains spoilers.
I feel the sting in that, even as I write it, but in truth, I don't see how Atwood moved the needle one bit in re-opening, or even re-inventing, the case of the murdered maids. Their brutal slaughter hangs in the air, still, and rests where it always has, squarely on the shoulders of Telemachus; and on the shoulders of men like him, throughout the ages. Odysseus may have ordered the slayings but it seems Telemachus took far too much pleasure in executing the deed, with his own nasty twist on things; in modern view, it barely scratches the surface of the eons of injustice and cruelty directed towards women.
I admire that the attempt has been made to re-invent an old myth, given that mythology works best when it is fluid and mutable. But what has Atwood changed here that makes it work either as a reinvention of an old song, or a modern cautionary tale? I like, very much, how Atwood deals with the wandering and philandering Odysseus: Rumours came, carried by other ships. Odysseus and his men had got drunk at their first port of call and the men had mutinied, said some; no, said others, they'd eaten a magic plant that had caused them to lose their memories, and Odysseus had saved them by having them tied up and carried onto the ships.
Odysseus had been in a fight with a giant one-eyed Cyclops, said some; no, it was only a one-eyed tavern keeper, said another, and the fight was over non-payment of the bill. Some of the men had beeen eaten by cannibals, said some; no it was just a brawl of the usual kind, and others, with ear-bitings and nosebleeds, and stabbings and eviscerations; she'd turned his men into pigs -- not a hard job in my view -- but had turned them back into men because she'd fallen in love with him and was feeding him undeard-of delicacies prepared by her own immortal hands, and the two of them made love deliriously every night; no, said others, it was just an expensive whorehouse, and he was sponging off the Madam.
So are myths created. A rowdy night on the town becomes an adventurous tale of derring-do in the hands of an expert wordsmith. It is the reason we count on poets: In the same breath as Atwood takes Odyssesus down a peg or two, however, so does Penelope suffer. No longer is Penelope the long-suffering, loyal wife; in Atwood's hands, she emerges as more than a bit of a harpie and as someone who is manipulative and a little too-clever by half, stemming from her inferiority complex.
Compared to Helen, she was only "second prize" and this rancoured in her breast, Atwood suggests. Indeed, Odysseus had been among the suitors for her hand, and like every other man on earth he'd desperately wanted to win her. Now she [Penelope] was only a second prize. Helen strolled away, having delivered her sting. The maids began discussing her splendid necklace, her scintillating earrings, her perfect nose, her elegant hairstyle, her luminous eyes, the tastefully woven border of her shining robe.
It was as if I wasn't there. And it was my wedding day. All of this was a strain on the nerves. I started to cry, as I would so often in the future, and was taken to lie down on my bed. Whenever Penelope feels stress, she lies down on her bed and weeps, rendering her more ineffectual in this modern version than in the original. It is this motif of powerlessness, running like a serpent in her life, that proves the maids' downfall for, while the maids are being slaughtered Penelope is sleeping, having barricaded herself in her room.
Afraid of standing up to Odysseus to defend her maids, whom she had nurtured and schooled into spying for her, she hides away, hoping to avoid Odysseus' s wrath, and the worst of consequences. In the end, the blame for the maids' deaths hangs more on Penelope's head than it does on Odysseus. She knew of their loyalty and trustworthiness, and as such owed them her allegiance.
Odysseus was only acting true to his nature, based on the facts at hand. She abdicates her power to Odysseus, and ultimately to Telemachus, and lets the maids hang -- literally and figuratively, forever suspended in time. I'm disappointed in Atwood's version of Penelope; I think she is far stronger and more resilient in Homer's version. One would have hoped that in the retelling, Atwood would have made her stronger, not weaker than what she was. The most moving, the most powerful, the most evocative lines come in the form of Atwood's poetry: At the very least, it gave them their voices back.
And once again, it comes down to this: Atwood's poetry is astoundingly good. She is a marvel as a poet.
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When Atwood parses her words, her thoughts, the distilled result becomes a masterpiece; yet, when she plays with too many words in the toybox, she becomes a bit of a dunderhead: Aug 30, Mike rated it really liked it Shelves: In the pantheon of great Greek works the Odyssey certainly ranks among the most well known. The adventures of Odysseus as he tries to win his way home from the successful Trojan War, a war that had already kept him from home for ten years. Well, after another ten years of various adventures and misadventures he finally makes it home to Ithaca only to find his loyal wife, Penelope, beset by opportunistic suitors drinking his wine and eating his livestock.
Yada yada yada, he and his son kill all t In the pantheon of great Greek works the Odyssey certainly ranks among the most well known. Yada yada yada, he and his son kill all the suitors and the treacherous maids that gave them comfort and reunites with his steadfast and loyal wife Penelope, fade to black.
After all, we just get Odysseus's perspective and let's just say that if you are ten years late coming home from a war you better have a damn good reason for the delay. So instead of Homer's interpretation Atwood presents us the story of Penelope and the twelve maids. You see, Penelope existed before she got hitched to Odysseus and we get her story from beyond the grave. We see her internal motivations, hopes, dreams, fears. You know, the type of things all humans deal with, even women.
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