Margaret Atwood is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. In addition to the classic, The Handmaid's Tale, her novels include Cat's Eye, shortlisted for the Booker prize, Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy, The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize and Oryx and Crake, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature in 2008. In 2017, The Handmaid's Tale was adapted for an Emmy-nominated TV series and Alias Grace was adapted into a Netlix Original.
For my family
‘… Shrewd Odysseus! … You are a fortunate man to have won a wife of such pre-eminent virtue! How faithful was your flawless Penelope, Icarius’ daughter! How loyally she kept the memory of the husband of her youth! The glory of her virtue will not fade with the years, but the deathless gods themselves will make a beautiful song for mortal ears in honour of the constant Penelope.’
– The Odyssey, Book 24 (191–194)
… he took a cable which had seen service on a blue-bowed ship, made one end fast to a high column in the portico, and threw the other over the round-house, high up, so that their feet would not touch the ground. As when long-winged thrushes or doves get entangled in a snare … so the women’s heads were held fast in a row, with nooses round their necks, to bring them to the most pitiable end. For a little while their feet twitched, but not for very long.
– The Odyssey, Book 22 (470–473)
CONTENTS
ii The Chorus Line: A Rope-Jumping Rhyme
iv The Chorus Line: Kiddie Mourn, A Lament by the Maids
viii The Chorus Line: If I Was a Princess, A Popular Tune
x The Chorus Line: The Birth of Telemachus, An Idyll
xiii The Chorus Line: The Wily Sea Captain, A Sea Shanty
xiv The Suitors Stuff Their Faces
xvii The Chorus Line: Dreamboats, A Ballad
xxi The Chorus Line: The Perils of Penelope, A Drama
xxiii Odysseus and Telemachus Snuff the Maids
xxiv The Chorus Line: An Anthropology Lecture
xxvi The Chorus Line: The Trial of Odysseus, as Videotaped by the Maids
xxviii The Chorus Line: We’re Walking Behind You, A Love Song
The story of Odysseus’ return to his home kingdom of Ithaca following an absence of twenty years is best known from Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus is said to have spent half of these years fighting the Trojan War and the other half wandering around the Aegean Sea, trying to get home, enduring hardships, conquering or evading monsters, and sleeping with goddesses. The character of ‘wily Odysseus’ has been much commented on: he’s noted as a persuasive liar and disguise artist – a man who lives by his wits, who devises stratagems and tricks, and who is sometimes too clever for his own good. His divine helper is Pallas Athene, a goddess who admires Odysseus for his ready inventiveness.
In The Odyssey, Penelope – daughter of Icarius of Sparta, and cousin of the beautiful Helen of Troy – is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife, a woman known for her intelligence and constancy. In addition to weeping and praying for the return of Odysseus, she cleverly deceives the many Suitors who are swarming around her palace, eating up Odysseus’ estate in an attempt to force her to marry one of them. Not only does Penelope lead them on with false promises, she weaves a shroud that she unravels at night, delaying her marriage decision until its completion. Part of The Odyssey concerns her problems with her teenaged son, Telemachus, who is bent on asserting himself not only against the troublesome and dangerous Suitors, but against his mother as well. The book draws to an end with the slaughter of the Suitors by Odysseus and Telemachus, the hanging of twelve of the maids who have been sleeping with the Suitors, and the reunion of Odysseus