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."
