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

Alna Maria Mathews Mulloor

doi:10.24113/ijellh.v9i5.11052

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.

Highlights

According to Greek mythology, the reason for all the problems is Pandora, who opened the box of miseries
Carl Jung defines the collective unconscious as a universal phenomenon which is “identical in all men and constitutes a common psychic substrate of a supra-personal nature.”(Jung 3) The collective unconscious is concerned with universal images that have been existing from the beginning of time
Mythology leads to the internalisation of patriarchy even in the minds of women, which results in the subservience of women to patriarchal norms

Summary

Introduction

The reason behind most of the myths is the patriarchal setting down of behavioural norms for women. In The Penelopiad, Penelope says, “So much whispering goes on, in the dark caverns, in the meadows, that sometimes it’s hard to know whether the whispering is coming from others or from the inside of your own head.” (Atwood 8) This depicts the amount of influence societal norms can have on one’s conscience. The mythical Penelope shows deep-rooted patriarchal conditioning which makes her think and act only according to the norms.

Results

Conclusion