Margaret Atwood The Odyssey Analysis

The Odyssey by Homer is an epic that delves into the adventures and travels of the hero Odysseus as he tries to return home to his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus in Ithaca after the Trojan War (Homer and Mitchell, 2013). This story focuses almost completely on Odysseus, but shows us small snippets of the life of Penelope. Although Penelope does show up in The Odyssey, she is not given a chance to tell her story, unlike her cousin Helen of Troy (Economou Green 2014). It is decades later, in 2006, that Penelope finally gets a chance to tell her story in the typical Greek Mythology fashion written by Margaret Atwood (Atwood 2006). The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood explores the classical greek vision of female representation compared to contemporary feminism by voicing the story of the women from The Odyssey by Homer.

Furthermore, contemporary feminism, in the time of Margaret Atwood and The Penelopiad, is based on equality and freedom of choice (Howells 2003). Finally, with both Classical Greek female and contemporary female views in hand, Margaret Atwood fuses them to create an identity for Penelope that goes beyond ‘woman’, ‘mother’, and ‘wife’ (Howells 2003). Homer does show improvement in his representation of women in The Odyssey through some of his descriptions of Penelope, however, Margaret Atwood took his small sacrifices to female worth and turned them into a story that gives Penelope power, choice, and a voice she was never given before (Vandamme