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A review by labyrinth_witch
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
3.0
The Penelopiad is a retelling if the Odyssey from the point of view of Odysseus’s wife, Penelope. I enjoy retellings of the Greek myths from the point of view of the women, who often are barely mentioned in passing or as props for the male quest.
However, I think I was expecting this tale to be more similar to Ursula Le Guin’s Lavinia, which is one of my favorite books. I had high hopes at the beginning of the book when Penelope is discussing her reputation as the perfectly devout wife and imploring readers to not follow this example. I was hoping, with this opening, that the story would reveal Penelope as a different female archetype and reveal how she had been sterilized through a thousand years of patriarchy. To some extent she is more cunning than the original myths give her credit for, but there was no master plot revealed that satisfied the initial question of “what was Penelope really up to?”
Atwood does provide interesting commentary on sexuality and I did love the idea presented at the end that Penelope is a symbol of matriarchal culture and the story really represents the overthrow of that order by patriarchy. I hadn’t really ever considered the story of Penelope to be symbolic in that way. That part of the book gave me something to think about and something more to investigate.
However, overall, I found that Atwood did not give Penelope much more depth than the original myths.
However, I think I was expecting this tale to be more similar to Ursula Le Guin’s Lavinia, which is one of my favorite books. I had high hopes at the beginning of the book when Penelope is discussing her reputation as the perfectly devout wife and imploring readers to not follow this example. I was hoping, with this opening, that the story would reveal Penelope as a different female archetype and reveal how she had been sterilized through a thousand years of patriarchy. To some extent she is more cunning than the original myths give her credit for, but there was no master plot revealed that satisfied the initial question of “what was Penelope really up to?”
Atwood does provide interesting commentary on sexuality and I did love the idea presented at the end that Penelope is a symbol of matriarchal culture and the story really represents the overthrow of that order by patriarchy. I hadn’t really ever considered the story of Penelope to be symbolic in that way. That part of the book gave me something to think about and something more to investigate.
However, overall, I found that Atwood did not give Penelope much more depth than the original myths.