Margaret Atwood - The Penelopiad - The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus

‘Yes ma’ams’ and ‘No ma’ams’ hovered on the edge of laughter, as if neither they nor I could take their servile behaviour seriously.

Unfortunately one of them betrayed the secret of my interminable weaving. I’m sure it was an accident: the young are careless, and she must have let slip a hint or a word. I still don’t know which one: down here among the shadows they all go about in a group, and when I approach them they run away. They shun me as if I had done them a terrible injury. But I never would have hurt them, not of my own accord.

The fact that my secret was betrayed was, strictly speaking, my own fault. I told my twelve young maids the loveliest, the most beguiling to hang around the Suitors and spy on them, using whatever enticing arts they could invent. No one knew of my instructions but myself and the maids in question; I chose not to share the secret with

Eurycleia in hindsight, a grave mistake.

This plan came to grief. Several of the girls were unfortunately raped, others were seduced, or were hard pressed and decided that it was better to give in than to resist.

It was not unusual for the guests in a large household or palace to sleep with the maids. To provide a lively night’s entertainment was considered part of a good host’s hospitality, and such a host would magnanimously offer his guests their pick of the girls but it was most irregular for the servants to be used in this way without the permission of the master of the house. Such an act amounted to thievery.

However, there was no master of the house. So the Suitors helped themselves to the maids in the same way they helped themselves to the sheep and pigs and goats and cows. They probably thought nothing of it.

I comforted the girls as best I could. They felt quite guilty, and the ones that had been raped needed to be tended and cared for. I put this task into the hands of old Eurycleia, who cursed the bad Suitors, and bathed the girls, and rubbed them with my very own perfumed olive oil for a special treat.

She grumbled a bit about doing it. Possibly she resented my affection for the girls. She told me I was spoiling them, and they would get ideas above themselves.

‘Never mind,’ I said to them. ‘You must pretend to be in love with these men. If they think you have taken their side, they’ll confide in you and we’ll know their plans. It’s one way of serving your master, and he’ll be very pleased with you when he comes home.’ That made them feel better.

I even instructed them to say rude and disrespectful things about me and Telemachus, and about Odysseus as well, in order to further the illusion.

They threw themselves into this project with a will: Melantho of the Pretty Cheeks was particularly adept at it, and had lots of fun thinking up snide remarks. There is indeed something delightful about being able to combine obedience and disobedience in the same act.

Not that the whole charade was entirely an illusion.

Several of them did fall in love with the men who had used them so badly. I suppose it was inevitable. They thought I couldn’t see what was going on, but I knew it perfectly well. I forgave them, however. They were young and inexperienced, and it wasn’t every slave-girl in Ithaca who could boast of being the mistress of a young nobleman.

But, love or no love, midnight excursions or none, they continued to report to me any useful information they’d found out.

So I foolishly thought myself quite wise. In retrospect I can see that my actions were ill-considered, and caused harm. But I was running out of time, and becoming desperate, and I had to use every ruse and stratagem at my command.

When they found out about the trick I’d played on them with the shroud, the Suitors broke into my quarters at night and caught me at my work. They were very angry, not least because they’d been fooled by a woman, and they made a terrible scene, and I was put on the defensive. I had to promise to finish the shroud as quickly as possible, after which I would without fail choose one of them as a husband.

The shroud itself became a story almost instantly. ‘Penelope’s web,’ it was called; people used to say that of any task that remained mysteriously unfinished. I did not appreciate the term web. If the shroud was a web, then I was the spider.

But I had not been attempting to catch men like flies: on the contrary, I’d merely been trying to avoid entanglement myself.

Now began the worst period of my ordeal. I cried so much I thought I would turn into a river or a fountain, as in the old tales. No matter how much I prayed and offered up sacrifices and watched for omens, my husband still didn’t return. To add to my misery, Telemachus was now of an age to start ordering me around. I’d run the palace affairs almost single-handedly for twenty years, but now he wanted to assert his authority as the son of Odysseus and take over the reins. He started making scenes in the hall, standing up to the Suitors in a rash way that I was certain was going to get him killed. He was bound to embark on some foolhardy adventure or other, as young men will.

Sure enough, he snuck off in a ship to go chasing around looking for news of his father, without even so much as consulting me. It was a terrible insult, but I couldn’t dwell on that part of it, because my favourite maids brought me the news that the Suitors, having learned of my son’s daring escapade, were sending a ship of their own to lie in wait for him and ambush him and kill him on his return voyage.

It’s true that the herald Medon revealed this plot to me as well, just as the songs relate. But I

already knew about it from the maids. I had to appear to be surprised, however, because otherwise

Medon who was neither on one side nor the other would have known I had my own sources of information.

Well, naturally, I staggered around and fell onto the threshold and cried and wailed, and all of my maids my twelve favourites, and the rest of them—joined in my lamentations. I reproached them all for not having told me of my son’s departure, and for not stopping him, until that interfering old biddy

Eurycleia confessed that she alone had aided and abetted him. The only reason the two of them hadn’t told me, she said, was that they hadn’t wanted me to fret. But all would come out fine in the end, she added, because the gods were just.

I refrained from saying I’d seen scant evidence of that so far.

When things get too dismal, and after I’ve done as much weeping as possible without turning myself into a pond, I have always—fortunately been able to go to sleep. And when I sleep, I dream. I had a whole run of dreams that night, dreams that have not been recorded, for I never told them to a living soul. In one, Odysseus was having his head bashed in and his brains eaten by the Cyclops; in another, he was leaping into the water from his ship and swimming towards the Sirens, who were singing with ravishing sweetness, just like my maids, but were already stretching out their birds’ claws to tear him apart; in yet another, he was making love with a beautiful goddess, and enjoying it very much.

Then the goddess turned into Helen; she was looking at me over the bare shoulder of my husband with a malicious little smirk. This last was such a nightmare that it woke me up, and I prayed that it was a false dream sent from the cave of Morpheus through the gate of ivory, not a true one sent through the gate of horn.

I went back to sleep, and at last managed a comforting dream. This one I did relate; perhaps you have heard of it. My sister Iphthime who was so much older than I was that I hardly knew her, and who had married and moved far away came into my room and stood by my bed, and told me she had been sent by Athene herself, because the gods didn’t want me to suffer. Her message was that