Sisterhood in Question: Rewriting a Life of Binaries in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad

Abstract

In Atwood’s The Penelopiad (2005), a feminist
rewrite of Penelope’s character from Homer’s Odyssey, we find that
a relationship among women as shown in the novella is
dysfunctional and fractured. The subject position of a woman in the
narrative has not been of great help to objectified women to the
disadvantage of women and their rights. The narrative voice of a
woman has not addressed the patriarchal and ideological world
constructed on the binaries among women. The women, even in
Atwood’s writing, have been portrayed in the stereotypical fashion
which disrupts sisterhood among female characters and exhibits
differential power relations among them. Instead of writing back to
the patriarchal canon, we read in the text about the Penelope-Helen
rivalry, Penelope-Actoris mistress-slave relationship, EurycleiaAnticleia tug of war and their displacing Penelope as Odysseus’s
deputy in the house in his absence, and Penelope’s narrative and
maids’ counter-narrative reflecting on how their uneven relationship
capitalized on maids’ horrendous slavish sufferings.