Waiting for Her Ship to Come in: Penelope's Perspective

The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus

by

Margaret Atwood

rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amongst the weed-encroached fields of literary resuscitation of another author’s characters, Atwood’s usurpation of Penelope from the tallow-smeared hands of Homer proves to be the olive tree growing amid the nettles.

Acclaimed as the most faithful wife, awaiting for twenty years the return of Odysseus, Penelope in Atwood’s hands takes umbrage at being used as a measuring stick used to delineate and beat a woman into obedience and ever-faithful wifery. Providing a counterpoint to The Odyssey by filling in the home-bound gaps of the epic, Atwood regales us Greek-style with a fleshed out and out-of-flesh Penelope and the Chorus of her twelve hanged maidens, shades that sing – sometimes in an idyll or ballad, but also as an anthropologic lecture and courtroom drama – against their brutal slaying at the hands of Odysseus. Displaying the cleverness attributed her, but also the emotional wreck that Odysseus left in his wake to pursue glory and keep a vow, Penelope provides a posthumous look at her story; wading through fields of Asphodel in Hades, commenting snarkily or with a note of lament, she weaves the happenings that were overlooked or misinterpreted in Homer’s epic back into the story, all the while, her hanged maidens rant and rhyme comedically and rather viciously about all who had a hand in their demise, but especially their executioner.

Atwood’s style is engaging, humorous, a tad bit acerbic, but she never lets Penelope drift into a serious bout of woe-is-me or shrewishness, even when being compared and overshadowed (even in death, as much as shades can generate a shadow that is) by her cousin Helen of Troy. The chorus of hanged maidens is downright funny, as is Penelope’s limited perspective on the changing times, not to mention the acidic commentary she occasionally directs at the gods. Atwood’s syntax and tale construction astounded me with their complexity and clarity and ingenuity. Any reading of The Odyssey would benefit from this supplemental interpretation, if not for the previous reasons, then for the burlesque commentary it offers after engaging with one of our foundational literary works.

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