Margaret Atwood's novel The Penelopiad was published in 2005. It tells the story of Penelope, Odysseus's wife in Homer's The Odyssey, from her perspective, which Penelope’s character makes clear at the opening of the novel is not the same. While she is a famous figure throughout Western history for her constancy and patience, we see a different side of Penelope in The Penelopiad, which paints her as a three-dimensional figure. As Atwood writes in the introduction to the novel, The Penelopiad deconstructs history's vision of Penelope: "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...
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