43 pages • 1 hour read
Margaret AtwoodThe Penelopiad
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 17-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 17: “The Chorus Line: Dreamboats, A Ballad”
In this interlude by the chorus, the maids describe their own dreams of being at sea with men they love, instead of being at the sexual mercy of any higher-ranking man: “chased around the hall/And tumbled in the dirt/By every dimwit nobleman/Who wants a slice of skirt” (125).
Chapter 18: “News of Helen”
Telemachus returns safely from his fact-finding mission, “more by good luck than good planning,” (127) and he and Penelope fight. She berates him for getting into such danger without seeking permission, accusing him of being little more than a child. He claims that he needn’t seek permission, being fully grown and entitled to the boats, and that someone needed to take action since Penelope refused to do so. After the fight, Penelope, Telemachus, and his friends Piraeus and Theoclymenus sit down to a meal: Penelope asks Telemachus to recount what news he received, and he tells her that he learned “that Odysseus was trapped on the island of a beautiful goddess, where he was forced to make love with her all night, every night” (131). “I’d heard one beautiful-goddess story too many,” (131) she recounts.
Penelope also asks after Helen, whom Telemachus describes as being “as radiant as golden Aphrodite,” (132) but when pushed further “that bond which is supposed to exist between mothers and fatherless sons finally asserted itself” (132) and he says that she has aged terribly and looks much older than Penelope. She knows that he is lying, but takes it as a gesture of love.
Chapter 19: “Yelp of Joy”
At last, Odysseus returns, though he is disguised as a beggar. In Penelope’s telling, she recognizes him right away, but did not want to reveal him to the Suitors for his own safety. In her own act of cleverness, she asks the beggar for a private audience and laments how she misses her husband (“better he should hear all this while in the guise of a vagabond, as he would be more inclined to believe it” [138]), and asks if she should ask the Suitors to duplicate Odysseus’s trick of using his bow to shoot an arrow through twelve axe handles. He agrees. She asserts that while “the songs claim” (139) (i.e. The Odyssey) that setting that task was accident, she knew that only Odysseus could complete the task.
She recounts a dream of a crooked beaked eagle swooping down and killing a flock of beloved geese, which the beggar Odysseus said meant that her husband would kill the suitors, but she later realizes it was the maids who were doomed. Penelope then has Eurycleia wash his feet, which leads Eurycleia to discover his identity by finding his scar, and she lets out a yelp of joy.
Chapter 20: “Slanderous Gossip”
In this chapter, Penelope attempts to deny the “slanderous gossip” (143) that legends have perpetuated about her. Now far enough removed from these allegations, she feels she can address them without appearing guilty. The rumors and her response are: that she slept with Amphinomus (he was the most polite, but she led them all on in order to string them along indefinitely), that she slept with all of them and gave birth to the Great God Pan (“Who could believe such a monstrous tale?” [144]), that Anticleia’s silence regarding the Suitors when Odysseus visited her in the underworld is proof of her infidelity (she already disliked Penelope, and was prone to silence, so it would be her “final acid touch” [144] to flame such rumors), that the maids were not punished for their “sluttery” (145) (as explained, she encouraged their relationships to gain further knowledge about the Suitors), and finally, that Odysseus distrusted her (he knew she would reveal him with tears of joy, and was too delicate to witness the Suitors’ murders).
Chapter 21: “The Chorus Line: The Perils of Penelope, A Drama”
The chorus presents the rumors Penelope addressed in the previous chapter in the form of a drama. In this performance, Penelope is indeed unfaithful, and Eurycleia is her accomplice. She sends Amphinomus, here her lover, away, and she and Eurycleia plan to betray the twelve maids in order to assure their silence about her infidelity, so that Penelope forever embodies the legend of faithful wife.
Chapter 17-21 Analysis
Chapter 18 further fleshes out the characterization of Telemachus. While their fight upon his return indicates a typical teenager attitude (with his “I’m an adult already and don’t need your permission” argument), he is, as admitted by Penelope, “quite spoiled” (130) by Eurycleia and the young maids, and so feels more entitlement than a typical teen. Additionally, Penelope’s status as a woman in a male-dominated society means that she still feels that she lost the argument and must plead for whatever information he’s learned. In this culture, where men are valued for their brawn, and kingdoms are defined by the breadth of their armies, Penelope feels that her only weapon is her moral authority, which is “a weak weapon at best” (131). Later, when she asks after Helen and Telemachus clumsily and belatedly lies to spare her feelings, Penelope is touched. In lying to her, Telemachus showcases that he is indeed his father’s son and displays affection in the manner to which she is accustomed. Her time with Odysseus has made her accustomed to the flattery of untruths, and she therefore receives a piece of familiar, exaggerated love, clumsy though it may be.
When Odysseus does at last return, in Atwood’s version, Penelope recognizes him right away. Instead of it being due to accident or divine plan, Penelope is intentionally manipulating Odysseus and the Suitors to assure his victory. She knows, of course, that only he can string his bow, and is simply helping him to succeed in order to enable him to overcome the Suitors. Perhaps, too, she is attempting to offer him a non-violent means of exerting dominance over the Suitors and dismissing their claim to Penelope. However, as Penelope points out earlier in that very chapter, Odysseus favors violence when he is assured victory— “stealthy when necessary, true, but he was never against the direct assault method when he was certain he could win” (136-137).
The dream Penelope recounts is also present in The Odyssey, and there Odysseus also interprets it as the return of her husband and slaying of the Suitors. In this telling, however, Penelope is able to voice the shortcomings of that interpretation. Namely, why the eagle has a crooked beak, and why she so loves and mourns the geese. Penelope’s interpretation, therefore, is that the geese are the maids, and, we can imply, that the crooked beak speaks to the crooked nature of Odysseus. Here, again, by giving the perspective to a modern-day Penelope full of hindsight, Atwood is able to directly vocalize her own or other scholars’ questioning of the original, male-dominated version of events in The Odyssey. The reader must question both the hero and the male-centric assumptions in favor of more nuanced interpretations of these texts.
Again, when Eurycleia washes Odysseus’s feet and discovers his scar, leading to her recognizing him, The Odyssey says that Penelope was distracted from Eurycleia’s yelp of joy. Here, however, Penelope is attributed with much more cleverness and ingenuity, having arranged for Eurycleia to wash his feet in order to slyly reveal his identity to her. Penelope only turns away from the scene to hide her laughter, much like she did when her father asked her not to leave Sparta.
In Chapter 20, “Slanderous Gossip,” modern-day Penelope addresses the rumors found in other mythic texts regarding her behavior. In giving Penelope a platform to address these accusations, Atwood gives a sympathetic voice to argue against this mythical slander, either by pointing out the sheer ridiculousness (sleeping with over a hundred men to give birth to Pan? “Who could believe such a monstrous tale?” [144]) or simply highlighting emotional counter-arguments. One example is that she was hidden away during the slaughter not because Odysseus didn’t trust her, but to save her from witnessing such violence. After all, who would want to see over a hundred men slaughtered?
However, Atwood does not let these rumors go addressed only from Penelope’s point of view. The chorus of maids, in their dramatization, also show why Penelope might indeed have indulged her more base desires. Much like the maids’ argument for their own outsize punishment, here, their version of Penelope says “While he was pleasuring every nymph and beauty/Did he think I’d do nothing but my duty?” (149). Even if the rumors were true, they argue, why wouldn’t Penelope be justified in having an affair, when Odysseus had had so many?
However, in this version of events, they also speculate that Penelope, caught in the act of infidelity and with her own life at risk, might sacrifice the maids to ensure their silence. Again, Atwood presents an alternate version of events that gives Penelope agency. She may be less innocent and kind in this take, but it still showcases her cleverness and independence, fleshing out the mythical woman who was nothing more than a paragon of constancy.
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By Margaret Atwood
