The Penelopiad: Full Book Analysis

Thousands of years after the events of the Odyssey, Penelope decides it is time to tell her side of the story from the Underworld, correcting the version of her that has been immortalized in literature as the loyal, devoted wife of the hero Odysseus. Penelope’s decision to tell her story provides an overarching conflict in The Penelopiad between the story she tells, the stories told by other people, and whatever the objective truth may be. This conflict shows how no one perspective can ever capture true reality, absent of any personal opinions or prejudices. To a degree, everyone who tells a story is an unreliable narrator. Within her narrative, Penelope also faces an external conflict between herself and the society she lives in—a society that diminishes women and values female beauty over intelligence. Within that society, Penelope clashes with her husband Odysseus, her cousin Helen, her son Telemachus, other women in her life, the Suitors—the list goes on.

The alternating narration of Penelope and the Maids also demonstrates how women are oppressed in their society, by both men and women, though the oppression of women from different classes is very different. Considering the death and destruction from the Trojan War as well as the murder of the Maids by Penelope’s husband and son, the subjectivity of justice is explored as each character has their own opinions on who deserves punishment, and for what crime, real or imagined.

The inciting incident of Penelope’s narrative occurs when Penelope marries Odysseus after he wins a racing contest for her hand. However, Penelope knows Odysseus cheated to win the race. He conspired with Penelope’s uncle, who wanted Penelope’s future sons out of the way so that he could gain complete control over the kingdom. Penelope’s marriage beginning in this way foreshadows several things about how her life would play out. First, she was familiar with Odysseus’s deceit from the beginning of their relationship, so she entered their marriage more skeptical of Odysseus’s motives than he may have realized. Her skepticism led Penelope to doubt the stories Odysseus told presenting himself as a hero, as well as all the stories that were told about Odysseus during and after the Trojan War. The conflict between narratives exerts itself. In addition, by knowing that Odysseus worked with her uncle, Penelope understood that in her society she could offer men only wealth or power. While Odysseus took the wealth that came with Penelope’s dowry, her uncle took advantage of their match as well by ensuring he would be the only king.

Though Penelope comes to love Odysseus, her loneliness in Ithaca creates a rising tension. This tension is exacerbated by the rising action, when Odysseus fails at his deceitful attempt to get out of his oath to protect Menelaus’s possession of Helen. Odysseus is forced to go to war and leave behind Penelope and their son, Telemachus. Without her husband for twenty years, with her son turning against her, and with a horde of Suitors greedy to possess and rule Odysseus’s kingdom, Penelope turns to a group of women for the first time in her life: her Twelve Maids. While her mother had treated her coldly, and Penelope felt contempt for her cousin Helen, she never truly knew female companionship until she enlists her enslaved servants, the Twelve Maids, to help her scheme against the Suitors by unraveling at night the shroud she is seen weaving during the day.

Although Penelope felt a kinship with the girls, their status as slaves meant that their relationship was unequal, and that despite her supposed affection for them, she was taking advantage of their status and beauty to get information from the Suitors. She also asks the Maids to speak ill of herself and Odysseus to extract information from the Suitors about their motivations and plans. In so doing, she exposes the Maids to rape and abuse and, later, to charges of disloyalty. Though Penelope looks back on her decision with some regret, she would not have acted differently, showing that the Maids were expendable to her. Just as Penelope blamed the Trojan War on Helen’s vanity, she blamed her disloyalty on the maids.

The climax of the narrative occurs when Odysseus returns to Ithaca, killing the Suitors and, with Telemachus’s help, murdering the Maids. Mythology asserts that Penelope was unaware of Odysseus’s identity while he was dressed as a beggar. However, she maintains that she recognized her husband immediately but did not want to hurt his pride by telling him. This again shows how perspective changes a story, as well as how stories passed on by men often change details to portray women as powerless and foolish. And contrary to what mythology indicates, Penelope was the one who gave Odysseus the idea for the archery competition, knowing the Suitors would not be able to string his bow.

However, Penelope is absent for the actual climax of the story, having been drugged and locked in a room by Odysseus’s loyal nurse and household servant, Eurycleia. Penelope’s knowledge of the climax comes from Eurycleia’s narrative again showing how women are oppressed by being excluded from important moments, at times even by other women. Though Telemachus was the one who hanged the Maids, Penelope might be seen as ultimately responsible for their deaths because they followed her orders to feign disloyalty. However, in the Maids’ version of the story, Penelope hid her affairs with the Suitors by placing blame on them. Regardless of the conflict in the narrative, the Maids died protecting Penelope, again showing how though women of all classes are oppressed, they are oppressed in different ways.

In the Underworld, Penelope and Odysseus exist like they did when they were alive, showing they may not have learned much from their time on earth. While Odysseus chooses to be reborn repeatedly, even though it means torment by the Maids, Penelope prefers to stay in the Underworld, bickering with Helen and waiting for Odysseus’s return, a state similar to the time she spent alive. In that sense, her conflict with society is never actually resolved. Similarly, the conflict in narrative and what is the “true” story can never be resolved.

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