Editors Reads Verdict
Atwood's most focused mythological retelling — the maids' choral interjections give the novella a theatrical quality that amplifies the central irony: Penelope's loyalty was rewarded with the deaths of the women who served her.
What We Loved
- The maids' choral sections are formally inventive and genuinely affecting
- Atwood's Penelope is wry, self-aware, and deeply intelligent without being anachronistically modern
- The feminist critique emerges from the story's logic rather than being imposed on it
Minor Drawbacks
- At 199 pages, the treatment is necessarily compressed — some threads could have been developed further
- Readers coming for narrative action may find the retrospective structure frustrating
Key Takeaways
- → Canonical narratives preserve the perspectives of the powerful — what we call 'the story' is always someone's story at someone else's expense
- → Penelope's fidelity was not simple virtue but a complex strategy for survival in conditions she did not choose
- → The twelve hanged maids are the Odyssey's unacknowledged victims — their punishment disproportionate to any offense they may have committed
| Author | Margaret Atwood |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Canongate |
| Pages | 199 |
| Published | November 8, 2005 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Literary Fiction, Mythology, Feminist Fiction |
The Penelopiad Review
The Penelopiad is Margaret Atwood’s entry in the Canongate Myths series — a project in which contemporary authors were invited to retell ancient myths — and it is the most focused and formally inventive of her shorter works of fiction. The novella gives Penelope a voice from the afterlife, allowing Homer’s most famously patient and virtuous woman to offer her own account of the twenty years she spent waiting for Odysseus, the suitors she managed, and the version of events that the epic has always offered.
Atwood’s Penelope is wry, intelligent, and fully aware of her own position in the story — she knows she has been cast as the good wife against whom Helen’s bad wife is measured, and she is not entirely comfortable with the role. Her account of her marriage is affectionate but unsentimental; she respected Odysseus’s intelligence and knew very well that his self-regard exceeded his other qualities.
The formal breakthrough is the maids’ chorus. The twelve handmaids who were hanged on Odysseus’s return — presumably because they had slept with the suitors, though Atwood’s Penelope suggests more complicated possibilities — interrupt Penelope’s narrative in choral interjections that take various forms: ballad, lecture, drama, court transcript. Their presence transforms the novella from a simple recounting into a genuine structural argument: the heroic narrative has always suppressed the voices of the people who suffered for its heroes’ glory, and the maids are the Odyssey’s most conspicuous suppressed voice.
The question Atwood raises — whether Penelope knew that the maids would be killed, and whether she used them as tools — is left deliberately open. That ambiguity is the novella’s final irony.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "The Penelopiad" about?
Penelope narrates the story of her husband Odysseus's twenty-year absence from the afterlife, offering her own corrective to the heroic narrative — including her account of why the twelve maids who served her were hanged at Odysseus's return. Part of the Canongate Myths series.
What are the key takeaways from "The Penelopiad"?
Canonical narratives preserve the perspectives of the powerful — what we call 'the story' is always someone's story at someone else's expense Penelope's fidelity was not simple virtue but a complex strategy for survival in conditions she did not choose The twelve hanged maids are the Odyssey's unacknowledged victims — their punishment disproportionate to any offense they may have committed
Is "The Penelopiad" worth reading?
Atwood's most focused mythological retelling — the maids' choral interjections give the novella a theatrical quality that amplifies the central irony: Penelope's loyalty was rewarded with the deaths of the women who served her.
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