I did enjoy the retelling of The Iliad in The Song of Achilles (2011) by Madeline Miller, which recounts the siege of Troy from the point of view of Patroclus, Achilles' closest friend and possible lover. Here in The Penelopiad (2005) we have another retelling of The Iliad, this time from the point of view of Penelope, left behind in Ithaca as her wily husband Odysseus goes to wage war in Troy for ten years, then spends ten more years coming home. Penelope as a young bride reminded me of Iris in the Blind Assassin: listening to her lover’s stories, and being bossed around by the actual woman of the house, with little to do but give birth, preferably to a son.
Atwood also calls attention to the maids that Odysseus and his son unjustly killed upon his return, when he also killed the suitors who were vying to claim Penelope. Why did he hang them? What had they done, besides sleep with or be raped by the suitors, which they had very little choice about? Atwood calls it at one point an “honor killing.” This focus on the treatment of servants, especially female ones, recalls Alias Grace, which also examines how servants are treated as disposable sex objects for the upper classes.
Toward the end of the short novel, which consists mostly of Penelope’s first-person narration, interspersed with song and dance from the maids, is a chapter titled "An Anthropology Lecture," where the maids offer a metaphorical reading of the incident. The symbolism of twelve maidens, led by a thirteenth in the form of Penelope, could be argued to represent a formerly matriarchal culture, represented by the thirteen lunar cycles, being taken over by the patriarchy. Atwood is also careful to point out that Odysseus taking his young bride to his home was counter to the prevailing tradition of the husband moving in with the bride's family and contributing the bridal gifts to her household.
Penelope alternates between telling the story of what happened in her lifetime, and relating encounters with other souls in the underworld. Most of them avoid her except the fatuous Helen. In the short fiction collection The Tent (2006), "It's Not Easy Being Half Divine" presents a short retelling of Helen's side of the story in a modern setting. "Salome Was a Dancer" does the same, portraying Salome in seven layers of cheesecloth rather than seven veils. In "The Nightingale," Philomena and her sister Procne speak of the horrifying husband who mistreated them both. The treatment of women in myth was definitely a topic preoccupying Atwood at the time.
The Tent begins with "Life Stories," a sort of anti-memoir about letting go of the past, “taking it apart,” to become only a whisper. This made me smile, as the whole reason I'm doing this project of rereading Atwood is because of her lengthy, detailed memoir. She claims in The Book of Lives that her publishers talked her into it.
The title story is a metaphor for writing. The writer is compared to a refugee in a tent, who is compelled to write the story of the vast, cold world around her on the inside of her tent, even though she may attract the attention of those who wish to harm her.
The pieces are short and experimental, often in the second person, often about writing, like the title story, and "Plots for Exotics," in which a character wants to audition for a protagonist role but is told she may not because she's an "exotic."
The collection has much more in common with Good Bones and Murder in the Dark than with her more traditional short stories, which make their return the same year, 2006, in Moral Disorder.
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