Big, Bad, Penelopiad

Firstly, thank you Atwood for condensing your lovely Canadian writing into a slim book with large margins. You are now almost at a Neil Young-tier of Canadian awesomeness.

I like the modern perspective on it all - in the Odyssey, the soldiers of Troy are never viewed as "vets" who have been scarred from the war. When the mythical is contrasted with the mundane on page 83, we are certainly more inclined to believe the mundane, given how grounded the Penelopiad is compared to the Odyssey. Gods are mostly dismissed by Penelope in this reading, giving us a sceptically modern, perhaps atheist view of the divine. The entire story of the Odyssey is shown to be a lie 'concocted' by bards, done only to extort gifts for framing Odysseus in the most positive light. Reading all this should make me want to tell Atwood to stop ruining all the magicy, greek-godly fun, but she does also highlight one other aspect of the Odyssey that makes me want to side with team Atwood...

"drum roll"

The imbalance of the sexes is a big theme in the Penelopiad, what with Penelope frequently biting her tongue, the swan-rape, general abuse of Penelope's maids, and Odysseus probably sleeping with all sorts of people while his wife remained faithful (or did she!?!?!). Social justice is incompatible with The Odyssey, as well as most other works in the ancient literacy cannon, and bringing feminism (as good as feminism is) into The Odyssey seems like a bit of an easy target. Of course the sexes were unequal back then, the sexes are still unequal today, and raping/hanging your female servants isn't even a thing now!

I'm not sure how I feel about the maid interludes. It's quite clever how they're all written in different styles, but segments such as the Anthropology lecture feel a bit unnecessary.

 Many of the twists that Atwood introduced seem perfectly logical, especially from our modern perspectives. Penelope would be laughing at her now-desperate father as she departed for Ithica, and Autolycus probably did set the boar on Odysseus himself.

Telemachus seems really arrogant and unlikeable, a cocky teenager who's always dismissing his own frail, lonely mother. It's basically the same view as given in The Odyssey, but in The Odyssey he's also a lot more (cue trumpets) HEROIC. The rug is also pulled under the story's titular character, as the maids suggest it was Penelope who was responsible for their deaths, making The Penelopiad's narrator decidedly unreliable. We get told all this, after the book has convinced us that Odysseus is an unreliable narrator. So who's actually telling the truth? Is it nobody? Tell me Atwood! You crafty Canadian, you.

Tom.