I love The Odyssey, it is a story wrapped in adventure and
excitement and Odysseus, of course, is the trickster hero who gets by on his
wits rather than his strength or any particular power. In The Peneopiad, Atwood
asks us to consider the wit of Penelope who fooled the suitors who threatened
to unpick her kingdom and swallow her up into an unwanted marriage. Juxtaposed
against Penelope’s story is the ‘chorus’ the twelve maids who were hanged by
Telemachus for their disloyalty, accused of flirting with the suitors and
slandering their masters. However, in typical Atwood fashion, there’s an
interesting twist on that story.
The Penelopiad is a dryly humorous read which reflects on
the thinness of the stories of the women from classical mythology, and it is
not so surprising that Atwood, with her reputation for feminist stories, has
taken this story on. It is well written, amusing, and I loved the use of poetry
for the chorus of slave girls whose story, more so than Penelope’s, is lost in
history. It gives it a real authenticity as though, perhaps, it had really be
written by the Greeks.
Penelope’s character also comes across very strongly, Atwood
really brings her to life. It could be tragic, and she could be spending
eternity feeling sorry for herself, but yet somehow the character manages to be
at once bitter, angry, jealous and disappointed whilst being strong and clever
and certain, a character with a measure enough of her own trickery. She builds, here, a real human story. In the end
it leaves you wondering who was the greater hero? The one who followed his wanderlust,
who travelled the seas searching for adventures and wars and monsters and
beasts, or the woman who stayed home and became mistress of her own domain,
plagued only by an annoyance of men and a guilty conscience about her part in
the deaths of the maids.
It would do the book an injustice if I didn’t spare a moment
to reflect on the characters of the maids who, Atwood proposes, were the
victims of their sex and lowly status. There is probably more than an element of truth in
that. Instead she shows us some girls who are loyal and feisty and who do their
best with the life they were given, and which was cruelly taken away. We see
them as women, with bodies that barely belong to them and whose role is that of
accessory, sub-text, secondary character, plot device or somesuch other minor function
but who in truth are as real as you or me. In a lesser hand there could be
something purely judgemental or mawkish about it, but Atwood writes with such
verve and life and vivacity that she brings those girls to life and makes them
funny and vibrant and wonderful.
All in all a very enjoyable read. The Penelopiad receives a
historically accurate 9 out of 10 Biis. And the last word, I leave to the
maids....
“Yoo hoo! Mr Nobody! Mr Nameless! Mr Master of Illusion! Mr
Sleight of Hand, grandson of thieves and liars!
We’re here too, the ones without names. The other ones
without names. The ones with shame stuck onto us by others. The ones pointed
at, the ones fingered.
The chore girls, the bright-cheeked girls, the juicy
gigglers, the cheeky young wigglers, the young bloodscrubbers.
Twelve of us. Twelve moon-shaped bums, twelve yummy mouths,
twenty-four feather-pillow tits, and best of all, twenty-four twitching feet.
Remember us? Of course you do! We brought water for you to
wash your hands, we bathed your feet, we rinsed your laundry, we oiled your
shoulders, we laughed at your jokes, we ground your corn, we turned down your
cosy bed.
You roped us in, you strung us up, you left us dangling like
clothes on a line. What hijinks! What kicks! How virtuous you felt, how
righteous, how purified now that you’d got rid of the plump young dirty
dirt-girls inside your head!
You should have buried us properly. You should have poured
wine over us. You should have prayed for our forgiveness.
Now you can’t get rid of us, wherever you go: in your life
or your afterlife or any of your other lives...”
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