Download NOTES FOR THE PENELOPIAD

NOTES FOR THE PENELOPIAD
Use this guide to assist you while reading Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad. This guide will provide you with
important information about different characters, events, and references.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Canadian author Margaret Atwood is a prolific and award-winning novelist, poet, short story writer, essayist,
and critic. From a young age, Atwood has been keenly interested in mythology and folk/fairy tales, which
inspire much of her poetry. Atwood is one of Canada’s most famous and respected literary figures. Published in
October 2005, Atwood’s original novella The Penelopiad was part of a Canongate series of myths retold by
contemporary authors. The Penelopiad reexamines Homer’s epic story the Odyssey through a variety of genres:
narrative, a classic Greek chorus, various types of poetry and song, and modern settings including a court trial
and an anthropology lecture.
THE PENELEOPIAD
The layout of this novel is characterized by monologues and narration from Penelope in the underworld,
flashbacks to important events in Penelope's life, and poetic and musical segments from the maids, both in the
underworld and during the flashback.
The story begins with Penelope alone in the Greek underworld of the dead. Penelope, the wife of Odysseus and
renowned for her faithfulness, has decided to tell her side of the famous Odyssey story. Penelope is haunted in
the underworld by the spirits of her twelve maids, the ones who Odysseys ordered to be killed upon his return to
Ithaca.
HOMER
Like Shakespeare, Homer is a highly influential but extremely mysterious literary figure. His exact birthdate is
unknown, and seven cities in Greece all claim to be his birthplace. Homer is attributed with two of the most
famous works of ancient Greek literature: the Iliad and the Odyssey (even that is contested by some, though
without much concrete support). Scholars estimate that the Iliad and the Odyssey were written sometime in the
late 8th or early 7th century BCE, making them the first known literature in Europe. Many, from history
through modern times, believe Homer was blind—however, there is no proof supporting this (especially since
Homer uses vivid imagery and color descriptions in his poetry).
ORAL TRADITION
Homer’s works come from and are shaped by a long oral tradition of storytelling. One theory states that the
Odyssey was originally developed orally, at least in part. This theory suggests that Homer may have used oral
performance to develop the story in parts. Much of the support for this comes from the style in which Homer
writes—a style originating from an oral tradition of improvisational bardic performance. Features of this style
include a mishmash of eras (the Bronze Age of the Mycenaean era and the then-modern Iron Age seem to exist
simultaneously in the Odyssey) and dialects from different time periods (the early Aeolic and the later Ionic).
This is attributed to the centuries-old oral tradition, traveling from generation to generation and producing a
poetic style with a blend of forms and time periods, old and modern.
Another feature of this oral tradition is the repetition found throughout the Odyssey, such as the descriptive
epithet attached to a name (e.g., “wily” Odysseus). These epithets did function in a descriptive manner, and
perhaps to remind audiences of who the character was—however, their main function was to aid bards in
improvisational performance. These bards could choose an epithet for a character from a pool of possible titles
of varying lengths. Choices could be made depending on how many syllables the poet needed to complete a line
according to the rigid rules of dactylic hexameter.
SUMMARY OF THE ODYSSEY
Homer's Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus's ten year journey home to Ithaca after the ten year Trojan War,
fraught with many perils, mythic creatures, and divine beings. By the time he makes it back to Ithaca, he finds
his home overrun with one hundred and eight suitors all vying for his faithful and cunning wife Penelope's hand
in marriage. Odysseus, with help from his son Telemachus and his patron goddess Athena, kills all of the suitors
and the twelve palace maids found to be disloyal.
ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION
Ancient Greek religion was based on the belief in a multitude of gods who possessed immortality, superhuman
powers, and a wide range of personalities. Greek mythology was based on stories and legends originating in the
Mycenaean era, which were passed down orally through to Homer’s time.
Greek religion had almost no specific guidelines that practitioners must obey—all a Greek individual had to do
was to believe the gods exist and perform sacrifices and rituals in the gods’ honor. Greek religion had a vast
body of myths about their gods, realms, and heroes. Notably, these stories were not held sacred and
untouchable; it was perfectly acceptable for poets, bards, and dramatists to alter or invent myths. Homer’s
works were highly influential in Greek religious beliefs about the gods, the afterlife, and the great Greek heroes.
THE OLYMPIANS
The twelve major gods in the Greek pantheon were believed to reside on Mount Olympus, the tallest mountain
in mainland Greece, and were hence frequently referred to as the “Olympians”. The twelve most commonly
portrayed Olympian gods were as follows: Zeus (king of the gods), Hera (queen of the gods), Poseidon (the
sea), Athena (wisdom, war, weaving), Apollo (music and prophecy) and his twin sister Artemis (hunting),
Hermes (the messenger, and god of guides), Aphrodite (love), Ares (war), Hephaestus (metalworking), Demeter
(agriculture), and either Dionysus (wine and theater) or Hestia (domesticity).
THE TROJAN WAR
According to mythology, the ten-year Trojan War was waged between the Anatolian city of Troy and the
Achaeans (a term used by Homer to refer to the Greeks as a united whole). The war was caused by the goddess
of strife and discord, Eris. Eris sent what has been aptly called the “Apple of Discord” to Hera, Athena, and
Aphrodite, a golden apple marked “for the fairest.” Of course, the three goddesses argued over for whom the
apple was intended. The goddesses took the matter to Zeus, who prudently decided to not get involved. Instead,
he took the apple to the young and handsome Paris, son of King Priam of Troy. Paris couldn’t decide who the
apple should go to, so the goddesses chose another tactic: bribery. Hera offered power over all of Eurasia, while
Athena offered wisdom and glory in battle—but Aphrodite offered the most beautiful woman in the world for a
wife. Surprising no one, Paris decided the golden apple should go to Aphrodite. In return, the goddess made the
beautiful Helen (already wife of the Spartan king Menelaus) fall in love with Paris and run away with him to
Troy, earning him the enmity of Hera, Athena, and all the Achaeans. (Whether Helen was seduced, abducted, or
left of her own will varies from story to story. Another variant is whether Aphrodite specifically told Paris that
she would give him Helen.)
Before Helen was married to Menelaus, she had been avidly pursued by many powerful princes, kings, and
great warriors (around ten to thirty suitors, depending on the story). Helen’s mortal father, the Spartan king
Tyndareus, feared that once a suitor was chosen, the unchosen suitors would take offense and perhaps even
resort to violence. One of Helen’s suitors, Odysseus, came up with a solution for Tyndareus and brokered a deal
among Helen’s suitors: the men would swear to uphold the honor of whomever won Helen’s hand. This meant
that when Helen ran off with Paris, all of her old suitors were now honor-bound to go to war against Troy for
Menelaus’s sake.
(Side note: Odysseus tried to get out of his own oath by feigning madness/idiocy to the messenger that brought
the news of war; he hitched a donkey and an ox to a plow and sowed his fields with salt. The clever messenger
decided to test him by placing his infant son, Telemachus, in front of the plow. Odysseus swerved to avoid
hitting his son, thus ousting him as a mentally sound man. Off to war he went.)
The Trojan War lasted ten years. Major figures in the tale included Hector (the heroic warrior-prince of Troy),
Agamemnon (the king of Mycenae, brother of Menelaus, and leader of the united Achaean army), Ajax (a
fearfully strong Achaean warrior), Achilles (the superhumanly strong Achaean warrior centrally featured in the
Iliad), and cunning Odysseus (who got a sequel all to himself). The Achaeans were finally able to breach the
city with Odysseus’s Trojan horse idea: the Achaeans pretended to give up and sail away, leaving behind a large
wooden horse ostensibly as an offering for Athena, but actually filled with a select group of Achaean soldiers.
The ploy worked—the Trojans (whose symbol just so happened to be a horse) cheerfully brought the horse into
the city as a trophy and celebrated their victory. When night fell, the Achaeans snuck through the city to open
the gates and let in the rest of their army. The Achaeans destroyed the city, killing all the Trojan males and
keeping or selling the females and children as slaves.
Some of the casualties of the war included the great heroes: Hector, Achilles, and Ajax. Many Achaean heroes
experienced hardships on their journeys home—there were gods on both sides of the fight, and the losing gods
were angry with the winning side. The Achaeans’ brutality in the sacking of Troy only angered these gods
further. Odysseus and Menelaus both had very long and difficult journeys home. Agamemnon was killed upon
his return by the treacherous Aegisthus, who was in collaboration with Agamemnon’s adulterous wife
Clytemnestra (this information serves as an ominous warning for Odysseus’s return to Ithaca in the Odyssey).
WEAVING
Ancient Greek weaving was performed on a warp-weighted loom, the main device used for weaving until the
Middle Ages. This type of loom has been in use since 7000 BCE, and is still used in parts of the world today.
The warp-weighted loom was an important technological innovation that increased efficiency and allowed the
creation of large, elaborate cloths.
Weaving was a very important activity for the highest status ladies in ancient Greece. During the Mycenaean
era (the time period in which the Iliad and Odyssey were set), weaving was the main economic export, and
women who were skilled weavers were extremely valuable.
Weaving was associated with wisdom and cleverness, both literally and metaphorically. One of the goddess
Athena’s domains, in addition to war and wisdom, was weaving. The cunning and cryptic weaver was an
archetype in many Greek stories. (Penelope herself is an example of this—in fact, one of the possible origins for
her name is from the Greek word pene, meaning threads/weft, and ops, meaning face, eye.)
THE DEATH OF THE TWELVE MAIDS:
Book 22 of the Odyssey Excerpt
[Eurycleia] left the cloister to tell the women, and make them come to [Odysseus]; in the meantime he called
Telemachus, the stockman, and the swineherd. "Begin," said he, "to remove the dead, and make the women help
you. Then, get sponges and clean water to swill down the tables and seats. When you have thoroughly cleansed
the whole cloisters, take the women into the space between the domed room and the wall of the outer court, and
run them through with your swords till they are quite dead, and have forgotten all about love and the way in
which they used to lie in secret with the suitors."
On this the women came down in a body, weeping and wailing bitterly. First they carried the dead bodies out,
and propped them up against one another in the gatehouse. [Odysseus] ordered them about and made them do
their work quickly, so they had to carry the bodies out. When they had done this, they cleaned all the tables and
seats with sponges and water, while Telemachus and the two others shovelled up the blood and dirt from the
ground, and the women carried it all away and put it out of doors. Then when they had made the whole place
quite clean and orderly, they took the women out and hemmed them in the narrow space between the wall of the
domed room and that of the yard, so that they could not get away: and Telemachus said to the other two, "I shall
not let these women die a clean death, for they were insolent to me and my mother, and used to sleep with the
suitors."
So saying he made a ship's cable fast to one of the bearing-posts that supported the roof of the domed room, and
secured it all around the building, at a good height, lest any of the women's feet should touch the ground; and as
thrushes or doves beat against a net that has been set for them in a thicket just as they were getting to their nest,
and a terrible fate awaits them, even so did the women have to put their heads in nooses one after the other and
die most miserably. Their feet moved convulsively for a while, but not for very long.
Source: Homer, Odyssey, tr. Samuel Butler, 1900. Public domain.
THEME KEY WORDS TO CONSIDER WHILE READING
• Faithfulness
• Responsibility
• Human Value
• Power
KEY WORDS FROM THE TEXT
Key words, characters, and important figures and places from The Odyssey and The Penelopiad.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Anticleia: Queen of Ithaca, daughter of Autolycus, mother of Odysseus.
Antinous: The devious and belligerent unofficial leader of Penelope's suitors in Ithaca.
Aphrodite: Goddess of love and beauty; in mythology, she sets the spark for the Trojan War by giving
Helen to Paris.
Athena: Goddess of wisdom, war, and weaving whose symbol is the owl.
Athena favors Odysseus for his tricks and cunning mind.
Artemis: The goddess of the hunt, virginity, and the moon.
Autolycus: A famous thief who was given the power of trickery from the god Hermes; named his
grandson Odysseus.
Calypso: A nymph goddess who "rescues" Odysseus after his ship was destroyed by Charybdis in the
second year of his journey. Calypso wants Odysseus as a husband, and thus keeps the man on her island
for seven years until the gods order her to release him.
Charybdis: The female monster personification of a great oceanic whirlpool; the first time Odysseus
and his crew encounter Charybdis, they avoid her. The next time, a god-sent storm sends the ship right
into Charybdis who consumes the ship and crew (except for Odysseus).
Circe: A sorceress-nymph goddess who turns Odysseus's men into pigs near the end of the first year of
Odysseus's journey. Odysseus outwits her with help from the god Hermes; impressed, Circe sleeps with
Odysseus and hosts him and his crew on her island for a year.
Cyclops: A giant one-eyed monster who eats several of Odysseus's men before he outwits him and
escapes during the first year of his journey. The Cyclops turns out to be the son of the sea god Poseidon,
who retaliates by making Odysseus's journey home long and grueling.
Eurycleia: A slave woman purchased by Laertes; raised Odysseus and Telemachus from infancy.
The Fates: Also called the "Three Fatal Sisters." Three older, hag-like sister goddesses who weave the
fates of men. One sister spins the thread, another measures the length, and the other cuts the thread.
Fields of asphodel: The dull, twilit area of the underworld where most of the dead reside, consuming
the asphodel flowers for food.
The Furies: Three monstrous sister goddess of revenge called upon by victims to curse their offenders
with madness, disease, and hunger.
Hades: God of the underworld of the dead; the word "Hades" is also sometimes used to refer to the
underworld itself.
Helios: The god personification of the sun, who rides across the sky in a chariot.
Helen: The "face that launched a thousand ships" (Doctor Faustus, V.i.); her elopement with Paris of
Troy was the catalyst for the ten year Trojan War.
Hospitality, laws of: An important social rule in ancient Greece that required hospitality to visitors and
strangers. The suitors in Ithaca commit a major faux pas by abusing this rule.
Icarius: A Spartan king, married to a naiad, father of Penelope.
Isle of the Dead: The underworld; Odysseus performs an animal sacrifice ritual in order to
communicate with the ghost of Tiresias.
Ithaca: A small, rural island in the Ionian Sea of Greece. Its main features are agriculture and livestock.
Laertes: An Argonaut on Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece; King of Ithaca, father of Odysseus.
Lotus shore: One of the first stops on Odysseus's journey; the natives feed some of his crew their
lotuses, which causes the men to forget about home and the war; Odysseus and the rest of the crew force
the protesting men back on the ships.
Melantho: One of Penelope's favorite palace maids in Ithaca.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Menelaus: A Spartan king, married to Helen, known for his power and wealth, a major figure in the
Trojan War. After the Trojan War ended, it took Menelaus eight years to make it home to Sparta. On his
way home, he hears from a god that Odysseus is alive and trapped on Calypso's island—information he
relays to Telemachus.
Naiad: A type of female elemental spirit (nymph; see below) associated with fresh water, especially
springs.
Nausicaa: A beautiful and wise princess of the mystical kingdom of Phaeacia, famous for its seafaring
and legendary hospitality. Odysseus leaves Calypso's island on a raft which gets destroyed by Poseidon;
he ends up swimming naked to the Phaeacian island. Nausicaa and her maids find Odysseus while
they're doing laundry; she clothes him and directs him to the palace. Odysseus tells his hosts the story of
the first two years of his journey, and the Phaeacians help him make it home to Ithaca at last.
Nymph: A nature spirit in the form of a beautiful young woman, often associated with a particular area
or land feature. Nymphs would seduce men with sometimes fatal results.
Odysseus: King of Ithaca, an important figure in the Trojan War (came up with the Trojan horse ploy to
gain access to the city of Troy), favored by Athena for his wiliness.
Oracle: An important and highly influential priest considered to be a mouthpiece of the gods; made
calculatedly vague predictions that were never wrong (any incorrectness was ascribed to mistakes in
interpretation, never to the oracle).
Penelope: A Spartan princess, cousin of Helen, married to Odysseus, renowned for her faithfulness and
cunning mind.
River Lethe: The river of forgetfulness, one of the five rivers of the underworld. Drinking its waters
before reincarnation caused a soul to forget its past lives.
Scylla: A flesh-hungry monster with six snakelike heads, lives on the land opposite of Charybdis. She
consumes six of Odysseus's men as they pass her cave; the sacrifice was a conscious decision made by
Odysseus in order to avoid Charybdis.
Sparta: A city-state remembered in modern times for its military prowess. In Homeric times, it was
known more for its poetry and pottery.
Sirens: Beautiful female creatures who lure sailors to their doom with their enchanting songs. Odysseus
ties himself to his ship's mast in order to hear the sirens’ songs without fear of succumbing to them.
Sun's cattle: The sacred cattle of Helios, the god personification of the sun. Against Odysseus's orders,
his crew slaughters and eats some of the cattle, angering Helios. The gods retaliate with a storm sending
the ship back to the whirlpool Charybdis, who destroys the ship and kills the entire crew except for
Odysseus.
Telemachus: Odysseus's son, in infancy when Odysseus left for the Trojan War.
Tiresias: The blind seer of Apollo famous for his predictions and foresight. Gives Odysseus instructions
for the end of his life, involving a final journey in Poseidon's name in order to make amends with the
god.
Trojan War: A ten year war between the city of Troy and the united Greek forces of the Mycenaean
era. It was a very important event in Greek mythology and oral storytelling, though there is no definitive
historical or archaeological evidence. The vast majority of ancient Greeks believed unequivocally that it
was a real historic event.
Troy: A city in distant Anatolia, home to King Priam and his handsome son Paris. The impregnable
walls of Troy were built by the sea god Poseidon.
Information adapted from:
PCPA: Guide for Educators. 2015, www.pcpa.org/resources/penelopiadstudyguide.pdf.