Literary Epistle: The Penelopiad

3 March 2017

Room US028

 

 

 

Dear Students,

 

Though unusual, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad belongs to a type of literary work that has gained popularity in recent times. Dubbed “parallel novel,” this kind of story is a spin-off, sometimes in the form of a sequel, written by a recent author, of a well-known classic work of literature. The parallel novel often contains elements of parody with satirical elements that make fun of its predecessor. Sometimes the new work merely pays homage to the work of the earlier author. In addition to novels and other literary works, such as plays and poetry, you are probably familiar with films that use the same strategy of paralleling well known stories, not as a film adaptation, but as an original story apart from the work that it parallels.

 

Probably the most famous parallel story inspired by the Odyssey is James Joyce’s Ulysses. The story takes place in one day--16 June 1904--during which the movements of protagonist Leopold Bloom around the city of Dublin correlate with Odysseus’ adventures. The tale also features a Telemachus figure, Stephen Dedalus, a young Dubliner in search of a father-figure, as well as a Penelope figure, Molly Bloom, Leopold’s wife, a singer who is having an affair with another singer named Blazes Boylan, who, in turn, corresponds to Penelope’s suitors.

 

As we’ve said before, in one way or another, the Odyssey has influenced a number of other original literary and artistic pieces across the ages, but Atwood’s is the first that I know of to retell the story in exactly the way it does. A Canadian author who studied at Harvard and has authored highly regarded works, such as The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood first published The Penelopiad in 2005. In an effort to address the masculine bias of Homer’s tale (the story mostly focuses on either Telemachus or Odysseus), Atwood takes as her narrator and protagonist Penelope, who speaks to the present-day reader as a shade in the land of the dead. In telling the story from Penelope’s point of view, Atwood also abandons the heroic tone and style of the Odyssey. In other words, she takes characters, such as Odysseus, Telemachus, Nestor, Menelaus, even the Olympian gods, who are portrayed as noble and larger than life in Homer’s story, and takes them down a notch so that they lose the glamor of the heroic treatment afforded them by Homer. In doing so, Atwood undercuts the notion that the heroic figures from the epic are more virtuous or noble than ordinary people. Characters whom we may find admirable from the Odyssey become less so because Atwood takes care to depict them in a realistic (as opposed to heroic or mythic) style that does not strive to hide their warts and blemishes but actually plays them up.

 

Atwood also gives voices to the twelve maids executed by Telemachus at Odysseus’ command after the slaughter of the suitors. She portrays them as the victims of life in a world in which they occupied the very bottom rung of the social ladder and in which they were treated no better than mere objects. By doing so, Atwood brings to the surface the darker side of the world that the Odyssey may gloss over. Whereas Homer’s epic portrays these maids as corrupt because they have slept with the suitors, Atwood emphasizes their powerlessness to have acted in any other way because of their station in life.

 

Atwood reimagines Penelope in a like manner. In retelling the story of what happened in Ithaca during Odysseus’ long absence, Penelope reveals things about herself that we would not recognize as belonging to the character we know from the Odyssey. It’s true that Atwood plays up Penelope’s cleverness, but she also includes surprising details about her heroine and how she managed her household in Odysseus’ absence and even how she managed the ordeal of being courted by the suitors. To bring this new perspective to Penelope’s character, the author consulted alternative sources to the Odyssey, myths and ancient stories that involve Penelope, that are either foreign to Homer or whose information about Penelope falls beyond the scope of Homer’s tale. Along with these alternate sources, Atwood consults her own considerable wit and fertile imagination to give us a story that may make us reevaluate Homer’s classic and to understand it in a new light.

 

I hope that’s helpful. What do you think?

 

From a parallel universe,

Dr. Carlson

P.S. I created the image at the top of the epistle using the words that the four groups in your class complied in your lists of the most important words in Chapter 1 on wordle.net. The words that appear most prominently in the graphic are the ones that were mentioned most frequently. Devote one of your three comments to naming four possible patterns in the story based on these words you chose from Chapter 1, "A Low Art."