The Penelopiad: Symbols

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Water

Throughout The Penelopiad, water symbolizes both the struggles and strengths associated with womanhood. Penelope often refers to how her father tried to drown her when she was a baby. That experience haunts her for the rest of her life, as she feels sick on the sea journey from Sparta to Ithaca and then refuses to ever cross the ocean again. In one of the Maids’ songs, they compare the ocean to the fluid in a woman’s womb, showing how water represents the dangerous journey of womanhood and childbirth. However, water also offers opportunities for women throughout the story. Penelope’s mother was a Naiad, a water nymph, whose only advice was for Penelope to act like water when presented with an obstacle, moving around it instead of against it. This advice inspires Penelope to come up with the idea of weaving Laertes’s funeral shroud to put off having to marry one of the Suitors. Finally, while Penelope spends her married life avoiding traveling on the ocean, a sea journey is something the Maids dream of, as it is the only way they could escape from their unhappy lives.

Weaving

Penelope’s weaving symbolizes how women can use their specific skills and powers to deceive men. Since weaving is seen as women’s work, Penelope’s weaving of the shroud is not something the Suitors question when she presents it as an excuse for delaying choosing one of them as a husband. This ruse allows Penelope to do as she pleases while acting like a pious and devoted daughter-in-law. The weaving also connects to the stories Penelope tells, whether to the Suitors, to Odysseus, or to readers of The Penelopiad. Just as Penelope wove and undid the shroud for her specific purposes, she weaves her story to convey her version of events in a specific light. As Penelope has never been able to tell her own story before, the weaving of her tale as well as the shroud shows how Penelope is finally able to assert her power.

Birds

Throughout The Penelopiad, birds are used to symbolize how women can escape the oppression of men by working together. Penelope is saved by a group of ducks when she nearly drowns at the hands of her father. She credits this event to her mother’s being a Naiad, showing how only women can save each other from the mistreatment of men. Penelope also dreams of the Maids as a group of geese, who are destroyed by an eagle that she knows represents Odysseus. In the final chapter, the Maids turn into owls, finally free to fly away from the cruelty they endured at the hands of men during their lives. These stories represent how women theoretically could work together, allied against the men who abuse them. However, the subjugation of women in society is so severe that it can exist only in dreams or mythology.

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