The Penelopiad

The other narrators of the book are the twelve slaughtered maids. Usually speaking with one voice, they accuse Odysseus of murdering them without adequate reason throughout the book. Many of them were raised by Penelope and were her favorite servants. They help her unravel Laertes’ burial shroud, and are “like sisters” to her. They are also instructed to gather information about the Suitors, through seduction and bad-mouthing Penelope and her husband and son. After the Suitors are murdered, Odysseus wants to kill all the maids as well, but Eurycleia chooses the twelve most impertinent ones for him to slaughter. They are hanged after having to clean up the blood of their lovers. In the sections of the book that they narrate, each time they take on a different form, often verse, but sometimes prose. They ask the Furies to haunt Odysseus for their murder, and they haunt him themselves when he is in the underworld.

Penelope’s father, King Icarius, tries to murder her when she is a child. Penelope is not certain why he does it, but thinks it is either to avoid the fulfillment of a prophecy of his death or to appease a god that demanded a sacrifice. In either case, after she is saved by a flock of ducks, he becomes overly affectionate and begs her not to leave with Odysseus, a request she laughs at.

Periboea is a naiad, or water nymph and Penelope’s mother. She is described as “chilly at heart” (10) as well as elusive, and more interested in swimming than caring for Penelope. “She had a short attention span and rapidly changing emotions” (11). On Penelope’s wedding day, Periboea her the advice to be like water, which can wear away stone and doesn’t go through obstacles, but around them.

Helen (of Troy) is Penelope’s cousin. She is married to Menelaus, who won her hand in a contest in which Odysseus also competed. She is famously beautiful and claims to be the daughter of Zeus. She is portrayed as incredibly vain and is adept at insulting Penelope— “not much escaped her when it came to assessing the physical graces and defects of others” (34). She runs off with Paris (in this telling she is not captured), thus igniting the Trojan War. Even in the underworld, she basks in the attention of men, and revels in the number of men who sacrificed their lives for her.

Odysseus is the king of Ithaca, a “goat-strewn rock” (31) and is considered by Helen to be an “uncouth dolt” (37). However, he is characterized as extremely cunning. He wins Penelope’s hand by cheating, drugging the other contestants to slow them down. He charms Penelope with his stories, and displays of kindness, and he “acted as if he reciprocated them” (48). In Penelope’s narration, his every action is contrived and designed, and he lacks sincerity. He tries to avoid going to war when the Trojan war commences by pretending to be mad, but is discovered when he refuses to run his son over with oxen (which he would do, if he were so mad that he didn’t recognize him, as Penelope asserted). He is integral to the war’s success, being credited with inventing the Trojan horse. However, he angers Poseidon and so spends ten years wandering the sea instead of making it home. When he does return, he poses as a beggar to avoid being killed by the Suitors, whom he then slaughters, along with the maids, after succeeding at the bow test. He reunites with Penelope but does not stay with her, instead running off to other adventures. In the underworld, he also does not stay with Penelope long, as he is haunted by the slaughtered maids.

Eurycleia is a nurse that raised Odysseus. She is “the world’s expert on Odysseus,” (62) and still performs all domestic tasks that a wife might otherwise do, saying that she knows how he likes it. Though she is protective of Odysseus, she does take Penelope under her wing, showing her the customs of Ithaca. She also helps Penelope enormously during her labor, and takes great pleasure in raising Telemachus, whom she loves. When Odysseus returns, she identifies the twelve more impertinent maids to be slaughtered. Penelope suspects that she might have done so in order to reassert her position of power among the servants. In the afterlife, she busily tends to a dozen dead babies and avoids speaking to Penelope.

Anticleia is Odysseus’s mother and Penelope’s mother-in-law. Penelope believes that she does not approve of her, and Anticleia is not the least bit helpful when Penelope arrives, refusing to help her acclimate and learn the new kingdom’s customs. She dies while Odysseus is at sea.

Laertes is Odysseus’s father and Penelope’s father-in-law. After his wife dies, he leaves the palace to live on a farm like a peasant, leaving Penelope to run the kingdom. She suspects that he went “soft in the head” (85). Penelope uses the excuse of needing to weave his burial shroud to delay choosing a Suitor.

Telemachus is the son of Penelope and Odysseus. He is born shortly before his father leaves for war. He is spoiled by Eurycleia and the maids and becomes a headstrong teenager. Before his father returns, he leaves without permission to go find out his father’s fate, and the Suitors plan to ambush and kill him upon his return. However, he manages to come home safely, and Penelope yells at him for his foolishness. He asserts that it was his right, and says he is the only one who seems to be taking any action. When his father does return, he helps him murder the Suitors and decides the hang the maids rather than chop them up with his sword. He also helps his father to hack the ears, nose, hands, and genitals off of the goatherd Melanthius, who supplied the Suitors with weapons.