© 2006 Margaret Atwood
224 pages
Which
is worse, waiting twenty years for a rascal of a husband to return home while
simultaneously managing his kingdom, raising his son, and fending off scores of
suitors – or being upheld as a saint for doing it? Everyone mocked Penelope for her loyalty
while she lived, and derided her for not doing more to discourage the suitors
dining locust-like from his orchards, but now that she’s dead, she’s become a paragon of chastity and wifely duty? It’s a little too much to take, and from the
Asphodel Fields, the shade of Penelope reflects on her life. The Penelopeiad is the story of the Odyssey
from her view, largely comic though sometimes regretful as she explains why she
acted as she did. Penelope’s narrative is interrupted from time to time by a
chorus of maids, in keeping with Greek theater.
The maids, Penelope’s servants before Odyssesus ordered their deaths,
are the touchstone of her regret. For decades they were her daughters by proxy,
her conspirators against the gold-hunting boors infesting her hall, her only
friends – and Odysseus slaughtered them! Helen of Troy makes frequent
appearances as Penelope’s opposite, a beautiful and wicked betrayer of men who
even in death enjoys teasing them. Although The
Penelopiad is fully grounded in Greek mythology, modern quirks abound; the chorus parts move from verse to
anthropology lectures and then a mock-trial that ends in a fantasy showdown
between Athena and the Furies. It's great fun that doesn't diminish the original source.
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