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What is The Penelopiad about?
Myth is always ambiguous. In countless retellings and recounts, what is considered to be true or the relevance of a truth even mattering is warped and moulded, recontextualised to be timeless and universal. Such is demonstrated by Margaret Atwood’s 2005 novel The Penelopiad, which retells and appropriated Homer’s epic, The Odyssey from the perspective of Penelope, an otherwise overshadowed character. Atwood reshapes the narrative to reflect contemporary contexts and values, and tells a story that is pertinent to our society. The Penelopiad is a book about truth and power, and how those who have the voice and power are the ones that decide what is true, holding the lives of other in the palm of their hand.
One of the main themes of the book is truth: who the story is told by. Penelope states that “many people have believed that [Odysseus’s] version of events was the true one”, so to set the record straight “[she’ll] spin a thread of [her] own”. Atwood brings up the idea, time and time again, that people with power (in most cases men) are the ones who have the ability to dictate what is true and what is not. Odysseus made up any fictitious remark about himself, deeply interpreting his own life, yet his account was taken as meaningful due to his reputation and position. This theme permeates the novel from the beginning to end, Penelope never getting a chance to tell her story while she was alive, and the maids still voiceless in death, all of which are structured in a power hierarchy that ruthlessly rips agency away from those born less notable.
On the counter-side to this, the novel is filled with deceit and lies. The same quote from above sees Penelope mention how “[Odysseus] was always so plausible … even I believed him from time to time”. Atwood wonders how Odysseus, actively known for his trickery and lies, still holds academic merit. She is haunted by these lies, where anyone with power can spin up their own tale and retell other people’s truth, enacting it into reality. From the moment they meet, Penelope comments that “the way Odysseus told the story made me suspect there was more to it”, and this follows for the rest of her marriage, where she states “the two of us were…proficient and shameless liars of long standing. It was a wonder either of us believed a word the other said. But we did. Or so we told each other”.
Overall, Atwood tells a story of how power is truth, more these days than ever. By recontextualising a novel told from the male perspective about glorified events embedded in myth, Atwood is able to use The Penelopiad as a means of touching on important societal issues such as sexism, wealth inequality and power imbalance, all through a unique but subtle novel that leaves the reader wondering one question: what was actually true?