Subverting the Myth of the Submissive Woman in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad

Abstract

‘The Penelopiad’ is a retelling of the Greek myth of Odysseus and his faithful wife, Penelope. According to the myth, Penelope cleverly keeps away from more than a hundred suitors when Odysseus went for the Trojan war. Therefore, her character is traditionally associated with marital fidelity and ‘The Odyssey’ portrays her as the quintessential faithful and submissive wife. This paper proposes to analyse how patriarchy creates the myth of the submissive woman and how Atwood subverts the myth through the characters of Penelope and her twelve maids.