The Other Side of the Web

[bibliogramma]

The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood

In contrast to the lengthier classical Greek works The Illiad and The Odyssey that provide the context for Atwood's novel, The Penelopiad is rather short. Of course, there's a significant difference between the kinds of things that men and gods (and goddesses) can do in classical Greek storytelling and the kinds of things that women can do. Penelope survives her childhood, is married, has a child, runs a small kingdom and fends off unpleasant suitors for 20 years while her husband is out and about doing manly things, and then at some point after he comes home in a clever but still manly fashion and puts everything to rights (at least, that's how he sees it), she dies. In fact, since she tells her story from Hades, one gets the impression that she has rather more of a "life" after death than she had for much of the time she spent on earth.

This is not a criticism, by the way. It's more of a comment on how completely Atwood has incorporated into not just the narrative but the structure of her book this very feminist perspective of what women do when the heroes are somewhere else. But Atwood is not just looking at Penelope and her experiences as a wealthy ruling-class woman left behind while her man goes to war, and faces adventures which may or may not be complete fantasies invented to cover up a decade spent screwing his way from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. It is also an examination of the lives and fates of working-class women, whose lives are even less worthy of mention than those of the daughters and wives of kings and heroes in all these ancient and heroic tales.