The Penelopiad and the Power of Changing Perspective

Being a lifelong fantasy lover, the strange creatures and tales from ancient mythology were enough to reel me in to the world of Classics, and ultimately lead me to major in it at university. When I was little, I had a fixation on fairies, elves and magic animals – not unlike a lot of kids, you may point out – but I took it to the extreme. I must’ve irritated my Mother with the amount of letters I wrote to garden fairies. I would take my special writing paper, embellished with flowers, and write in my finest handwriting an imploring and curious letter, before sticking it in the dirt at the bottom of the tallest tree in my garden with a stick. I even left plastic rings attached to the letters for the fairies to use as tiaras, as if they wouldn’t have already had tiny delicate crowns made from leaves and petals. I don’t think they would’ve appreciated a bit of plastic junk from a free kids magazine, but hey, it’s the thought that counts. Anyway, these childhood obsessions moved from fairies to fantasy worlds depicted in books such as Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, where I was confounded by the level of imagination and meticulous detail that these stories contained.

As time went on, I realised that a lot of the ideas in fantasy novels and films were not completely original, or entirely created from a figment of imagination. Instead, as I found, many fantastical creatures, places and ideas were derived from classical mythology. And so began my desire to study classical literature (albeit in English translations due to the lack of Latin or Ancient Greek teachers at my schools and universities). One of the first pieces of classical literature I studied was Homer’s Iliad in college, which opened my eyes to a completely unfamiliar genre: the epic poem. It was interesting for a number of reasons, first of all because it is not fundamentally a piece of literature at all. Although we might study it in literature form, we have to remember that ‘Homer’ as a writer may not even exist, or may be multiple people, and that the story we read was most likely originally a collection of tales sung or spoken by a bard – a person who composed and recited epic or heroic poems, often while playing the harp or lyre. This was a really interesting concept to me, that I was reading something that was intended to be performed, an example of storytelling in its purest form.

The content itself of The Iliad was interesting – but with perhaps a bit too much war and gore for my liking. When I moved onto The Odyssey, I felt much more in my element. This is lucky, since I went on to study The Odyssey twice more at university, AND for my dissertation too. For a fantasy lover, The Odyssey has everything you could possibly want. Strange and beautiful lands? Check. Fantastical creatures from land and sea? Check. Powerful and enchanting goddesses? Check. A difficult but ultimately fulfilling journey? You get the idea. It has always baffled me that there hasn’t been a Game of Thrones-type television series created depicting the journey of Odysseus. I admit, it would be a huge task and perhaps creators are intimidated by the age and influence of the poem, and there is also a high chance that it would not be very good – but I would still like to watch it.

Anyway, I think maybe it’s time to progress with the main point of this blog post, which is to discuss Margaret Atwood’s adaptation of The Odyssey in novella form, The Penelopiad. Forgive me for the long introduction – since this is my first post, I felt it was necessary to give some backstory into my love of fantasy and Classics as a subject and realm. My interest in feminism and the power of the female voice began roughly when I was 15, a few years before I started studying Classics. From this age, I began to interrogate the things I read with a more critical eye than I had in the past, asking questions about the female characters; what they spoke about, how they were depicted and what their purposes were. However, as I began reading classical literature, I didn’t hold it to the same standards as I held modern literature to. I was well aware that feminism did not exist as a concept in Ancient Greece, and so it didn’t surprise me too much that the main female (non-goddess) characters in The Odyssey were a faithful wife and a beautiful yet dangerous pawn in a man’s game. This is not to say that there are no interesting or powerful female characters in The Odyssey – there are some super cool and fearless goddesses, and even the main characters are more than what they seem – yet, it is hardly a feminist story. It is a man’s story, after all, like many classical tales are.

I got The Penelopiad as a Christmas present, which I was over the moon about. Margaret Atwood is definitely one of my favourite authors, with her books being gripping, female oriented and experimental, and she’d written her own version of a classical text I loved. On initial glance, the novella is tiny, but it is soon apparent that Atwood is not attempting to rewrite The Odyssey in full, therefore she does not need to take up too much space. Instead, she writes from the perspective of Penelope, not in chronological format, but from the perspective that Penelope is in the afterlife, looking back on the events of The Odyssey, and her life. Additionally to Penelope, Atwood’s novella belongs to the 12 maids hanged by Odysseus on his return to Ithaca. Despite the novella’s misleading name, it is the maids who have the loudest voice throughout the text, even haunting Penelope as she tells her version of events.

Arguably the two most important Homeric women, Helen and Penelope do not interact at all in either The Odyssey or The Iliad; instead, they are contained away from each other and a dichotomy is created in which the women fall on opposite sides. In The Penelopiad, Atwood imagines what might happen if these two important female characters actually interacted, but she hardly portrays a friendship. Instead, she plays on this dichotomy the two women have been placed in by making them mortal enemies, in order to demonstrate the constant competition that women in The Odyssey face, where they compete for the attention and approval of the men around them. It seems that women cannot use their voices together because they all fear each other; they are aware that they are easily replaceable and subject to the whims of men.

By emphasising how they are not alike, having both characters constantly insult each other, Atwood deliberately calls attention to the similarities between Helen and Penelope. Penelope may say she is not a siren, but she uses her intellect to lead the suitors into false pretences, which is potentially more calculating than what Helen does. Indeed, Helen leads men into war and to their deaths, like a siren, but she does this unintentionally. In fact, we never actually see Helen seducing anyone in The Iliad or Odyssey. And so, by having Penelope call Helen out, Atwood highlights the contradictions of Penelope’s character, and in fact, of all women. She suggests that you cannot box women into categories such as the pure wife or the femme fatale because these are superficial labels and cannot account for a person’s whole character.

Moving away from Helen and Penelope’s relationship, the twelve maids act as a chorus, weaving poems, songs and chants throughout the story; therefore their unified voice forms the heart of the novella. The maids go from having no voice in The Odyssey to becoming a powerful and indignant force in Atwood’s re-imagining. The main reason given for the murder of the maids is that they slept with the suitors, therefore dishonouring the palace, but Odysseus obliterates his justification when he confronts the suitors in Book 22. He says to the men, ‘you despoiled my household and forcibly took my serving women to sleep beside you’, which explicitly reveals that the maids were raped. This means that the maids are being punished for actions outside of their control, actions that hurt them. Melantho may be described as Eurymachus’ ‘sweetheart’, but it is highly unlikely the maids would have had any other choice but to play along with the suitors’ fantasies, as they would risk danger to themselves otherwise. While this cruelty is unchallenged in The Odyssey, Atwood calls attention to these injustices in an attempt to counteract the notion of Odysseus’ heroism and give the dominant voice to wronged women.

There are other criticisms of the patriarchy running through the novella besides the chorus of maids. The way Penelope describes her marriage, being second choice to Helen and being handed to Odysseus at age fifteen ‘like a package of meat’, brings to light how women had little choice but to succumb to men. Penelope may be faithful and devoted, but Atwood demonstrates that these qualities do not guarantee the willingness of a woman to be treated like an object.  Also, by underlining the lack of female choice in marriage, Atwood encourages sympathy towards Helen who is punished for betraying a marriage in which she was won like a prize, with no regard for her own desires. There is also a rather explicit warning for female readers to not let themselves be controlled by men, as Penelope says ‘don’t follow my example, I want to scream in your ears’. Despite being the homeric prototype of the perfect woman, Atwood imagines Penelope as a cautionary tale.

Female adaptations of classical texts like Atwood’s The Penelopiad have risen in popularity over the last few decades, such as Helene Cixous’, The Laugh of the Medusa and Alice Oswald’s Memorial, a reworking of The Iliad. While not all of these translations specifically aim to provide an alternative to sexist traditions in ancient texts or male translations, their mere existence helps to add female perspectives into the field of classics. Atwood, however, clearly does desire to challenge representations of the female voice in The Odyssey. Not only does she provide her own perspective, but she provides Penelope’s and the murdered maids’ perspective, providing a scope of female voices from the high status individual to the low status group.

There is so much more to The Penelopiad than what I have discussed in this post – comedy, beautiful poetry and great dialogue between characters – but I don’t want to overdo it. Although this novella may not be blatant fantasy, it is definitely a story of an alternate reality. This is in part due to the perspective of the novella being from the afterlife, but also because Atwood has provided an alternate version of famous events, forcing us to confront the portrayals of female characters in all classical texts and ask the question, what if? For me personally, The Penelopiad serves as a source of inspiration. I hope to one day write a piece of fiction or poetry inspired by the classical world, or even create a modern adaptation of classical literature. Especially if I can get some magical creatures in there.