Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad is Penelope’s version of The Odyssey. Her act of witnessing becomes a testimony for the often overlooked death of the twelve maids, executed by Telemachus and Odysseus upon Odysseus’s arrival home. Penelope, narrating from beyond the grave, weaves the story (pun intended) with the voices of the maids themselves, often in the form of a chorus in alternating chapters. Penelope’s struggles against her parents, her in-laws, Eurycleia, and the suitors is the stuff, of course, of epic.
Nevertheless, this story didn’t really work for me. An older, wiser, deader Penelope reflecting on the events alienated me from the story. When she told what happened to her, I was interested; but when she mentioned running into Helen in the afterlife, I was not. Also, the voices of the maids, stylized in songs, dialogues, dramas, and an academic lecture, were still overlooked, even in the book that professed to vindicate them. I was not persuaded that Penelope understood the meaning of their deaths any more than Odysseus did. The feminism was simply too heavy-handed.
The coolest part was Penelope’s description of her mother, who was a Naiad, but unfortunately that was matter of five or so pages.
It was an interesting commentary on myth, and the way that storytelling can distort the truth; but I thought that The Penelopiad contributed to rather than excoriated the problem. If it was a satire, it was too subtly cast for me. Instead, I wanted Penelope’s story narrated by the contemporary Penelope, or the maids’ story narrated by one of the maids.
5.5 / 10.0.
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