Summary
"Heart of Flint"
After the suitors have been slaughtered, Penelope leaves the women's quarters to officially reunite with Odysseus. She takes her time—he has certainly made her wait enough these past twenty years. She also needs time to mask her true feelings about the death of the twelve maids. She eventually finds Telemachus and Odysseus in the parlor. Telemachus scolds his mother for not immediately running to Odysseus, accusing her of being hard-hearted. Penelope responds that she cannot believe that the dirty beggar in front of her is the same man who left Ithaca so long ago. Odysseus takes a bath, and Penelope decides to "tease" him again when he emerges. She tells Eurycleia to remove the bed from their bedroom—the one that cannot be moved because it was crafted out of the trunk of a living tree. Odysseus is irate that his bed had been cut from the tree. Penelope finally pretends to recognize him, claiming that he had passed the bedpost test.
Penelope and Odysseus retire to their bedroom, where they tell each other stories. Odysseus recounts his travels to her. Penelope tells him about dealing with the suitors and her trick with the shroud. They tell each other how much they missed each other over the years. Odysseus leaves again almost immediately, telling Penelope that he has to atone for killing the suitors.
"The Chorus Line: The Trial of Odysseus, as Videotaped by the Maids"
In this chapter, the maids act out a mock trial of Odysseus for slaughtering the suitors. The attorney for Odysseus's defense argues that Odysseus was justified in killing the suitors because they were "eating his food without his permission, annoying his wife, and plotting to murder his son and usurp his throne" (175). The attorney goes on to argue that Odysseus was merely acting in self-defense and asks that the judge dismiss the case. The judge says that he is inclined to agree. The maids make a commotion in the back of the courtroom, accusing the court of forgetting about them. They ask about their case—Odysseus killed them in cold blood over nothing. The judge asks the attorney what he has to say in Odysseus's defense. The attorney responds that Odysseus was "acting within his rights" because the maids were his slaves (178). The judge responds that Odysseus must have had some reason, as slaves "ought not to be killed at whim" (178). Odysseus's attorney responds that the slaves had sex with the suitors, Odysseus's enemies.
The judge reads from the Odyssey, where it says in Book 22 that the maids were raped. It also says that Odysseus knew that they were taken against their will by the suitors. The attorney responds that he wouldn't know as he wasn't there—the events of the Odyssey took place thousands of years before his time. The judge calls witnesses: Penelope, who says she was asleep. She tells the judge that Odysseus wasn't angry that the maids were raped. Instead, he was angry that they were raped without his permission. The judge finally decides that standards of behavior were different in Odysseus and Penelope's time. Therefore, he dismisses the case.
The maids express outrage and call upon the Angry Ones. Twelve furies appear. The maids call upon the furies to torment Odysseus for his crime for the rest of his existence. Odysseus's attorney calls upon the goddess Athena to defend him.
"Home Life in Hades"
Penelope describes her existence in the underworld after death. She says that she sometimes looks in on the modern world through the eyes of mediums in order to try to keep an eye on Odysseus. Spirits in the underworld can be reborn if they drink from the Waters of Forgetfulness and forget their previous lives. Helen has been reborn several times, each time returning to Hades to boast about the destruction she has caused. Penelope says that she will never choose to be reborn—in her opinion, modern humans are "as tawdry as ever" (188). Odysseus also is often reborn, though he tells Penelope every time he returns that he longs to stay with her. Penelope believes that the maids, who are always approaching from a distance and who make Odysseus nervous. Penelope tries to ask the maids what they want from Odysseus, but they never answer her.
"The Chorus Line: We're Walking Behind You, A Love Song"
The maids sing a song addressed to Odysseus. They warn Odysseus that their memory is always right behind him and they will never leave him alone. They ask Odysseus why he murdered them, knowing that he will never answer.
"Envoi"
The maids address both Odysseus and the reader in the final poem of the novel. Their express one final lament: "we had no voice / we had no name / we had no choice / we had one face / one face the same" (195).
Analysis
Odysseus and Penelope finally truly reunite in this final section of the Penelopiad. When they do so, they repeat the same habits of their early marriage: lying in bed together and telling stories. This time, however, Penelope's perspective has changed. She has aged twenty years and knows a lot more about herself and her husband than she knew before. She is skeptical, now, of the truth behind Odysseus's stories, assuming that there are multiple versions to what he tells her: "Odysseus told me of all his travels and difficulties—the nobler versions, with the monsters and the goddesses, rather than the more sordid ones with the innkeepers and whores" (172). Despite the fact that Odysseus has come home to speak for himself, the "sordid" narratives still remain in Penelope's mind and cannot be fully erased. Penelope and Odysseus both play the roles of husband and wife, each of them performing for the other. Penelope can sense a falsity beneath what each of them says to the other: "The two of us were—by our own admission—proficient and shameless liars of long standing. It's a wonder one of us believed a word the other said. But we did. Or so we told each other" (173). Later, in the underworld, Penelope will continue to wait for Odysseus's return after his many different adventures. Even then, Odysseus assures his wife that he wishes they could be together. By this time, however, Penelope starts to believe him and transfers her blame to someone else—the twelve maids. "He does mean it," she explains. "He really does. He wants to be with me. He weeps when he says it. But then some force tears us apart. It's the maids. He sees them in the distance, heading our way. They make him nervous. They make him restless. They make him want to be anywhere and anyone else" (189).
Penelope's final accusation that the maids are what is driving Odysseus away from her shows us that her character has changed over the centuries. Rather than see mistrust her flighty husband and his million excuses, she transfers the blame to the twelve maids, who were once her allies and partners in crime. In this process, the separation between Penelope and the maids has cemented. Even though they found common ground through their gender and their nightly shared task of undoing the shroud in the women's quarters, Penelope keeps her loyalty to her husband even after death. She is fundamentally separated from the maids because of her class. She has picked her side and chooses to swallow her grief over the maids' deaths when she and Odysseus reunite. Penelope dies being the only person who knew the truth about the maids. If she had revealed what had really happened, the maids might have been granted proper burials, which would have eased their suffering in the afterlife. However, Penelope's first instinct is for self-preservation, even though the maids sacrificed their lives to help her.
The final chapters of the Penelopiad move away from Penelope's story to that of the maids, who fight back against the injustice of their murder even after death. Odysseus is put on trial, set in the modern day, which the maids "videotape." The fact that they are the record-keepers of this trial is significant, as they are the ones who demand that Odysseus answer for his injustices, their brutal murders are the record of what he has done to them. Despite this, the trial does not go their way. First of all, the judge does not even consider questioning Odysseus about the maids; instead, the trial begins on the question of whether or not Odysseus wrongfully slaughtered Penelope's suitors. The judge quickly decides that Odysseus is not guilty and moves to dismiss the case, causing the maids to erupt in protest: "You've forgotten about us! What about our cases! You can't let him off!" (177). This scene enacts how readers have responded to the maids throughout history—there has been zero scrutiny into their deaths. Instead they—like many lower-class women throughout the history of the world—were "forgotten."
The fact that Atwood puts Odysseus on trial for the maids' murder in the Penelopiad brings to light the problem of bringing modern sensibilities to ancient texts. Modern readers are quick to understand that the maids' murder was unjust. They were killed for being "impertinent" (in other words, for sleeping with the suitors). However, they were acting on Penelope's behalf; additionally, they did not have any choice in the matter. The suitors had so much more power than the maids in that situation that the question of their consent is all but moot. Additionally, many of the maids were raped. As the judge notes, even Homer calls it rape in the Odyssey: "It's written here, in this book—a book we must needs consult, as it is the main authority on the subject—although it has pronounced unethical tendencies and contains far too much sex and violence, in my opinion—it says right here—let me see—in Book 22, that the maids were raped. The Suitors raped them" (180). Thus, despite Odysseus's attorney's claim that he could do whatever he wanted with the maids because they were his property, Odysseus killed them simply for being the victims of a crime. The judge argues that servants shouldn't simply be frivolously killed—there has to be a valid reason behind their murder in order for it to be ethical. Penelope is called upon to clarify what Odysseus saw as the maids' crime against the kingdom. She tells the judge, "it wasn't the fact of their being raped that told against them, in the mind of Odysseus. It's that they were raped without permission" (181).
The judge implies that Odysseus was wrong in killing the maids. Ultimately, he lets Odysseus off because of his reputation as a great Western hero: "It would be unfortunate if this regrettable but minor incident were allowed to stand as a blot on an otherwise exceedingly distinguished career" (182). He also notes that moral standards were different in Ancient Greece: "your client's times were not our times. Standards of behavior were different then" (182). Finally, he moves to dismiss the case, essentially declaring Odysseus an innocent man. He bases his decision to do so on a desire not to disrupt the status quo: "I do not wish to be guilty of anachronism" (182). In other words, because this event has been seen as morally acceptable for centuries, then it will continue to be so. Atwood's narrative suggests a different approach, however. The entire project of the Penelopiad is Atwood's attempt at disrupting dominant narratives and bringing a new light to these ancient texts. So, despite the fact that Odysseus "gets off" within the world of the novel, outside of the novel, he has been painted in a new light. After the publication of The Penelopiad, Odysseus the literary character will hold the weight of these accusations against him, as he is re-adapted into new versions of himself and new narratives for centuries to come.
With no one else to enact justice for them, the maids enact their own justice. They call upon the Furies to torment Odysseus for the rest of his existence. They also torment him every time he forays into the underworld, which is both a punishment for Odysseus and Penelope. Odysseus is never able to sit still for long, and Penelope must endure eternally waiting for her husband with no end. The maids warn Odysseus in the second-to-last chapter that their torment has no end: "We can see through all your disguises: the paths of day, the paths of darkness, whichever paths you take—we're right behind you, following you like a trail of smoke, like a long tail, a tail made of girls, heavy as memory, light as air: twelve accusations, toes skimming the ground, hands tied behind our backs, tongues sticking out, eyes bulging, songs choked in our throats" (192). The grotesque image of the maids' spirit bodies turns into a nightmarish threat as they plan to haunt Odysseus for the rest of time.
Atwood gives the maids the last word in the Penelopiad. They sing the final "envoi," which reminds the reader of everything that they had to endure: "we had no voice / we had no name / we had no choice / we had no face / one face the same" (195). Finally, they are transformed into owls and fly away.
