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

Odysseus, or to protect his family. They had shown no loyalty to him in his absence; on the contrary. So how dependable was their word?

Could a reasonable man expect that they would ever pay a single ox of what they had promised?

And let us consider the odds. A hundred and twenty, give or take a dozen, to one, or stretching a point to four, because Odysseus did have accomplices, as my colleague has termed them; that is, he had one barely grown relative and two servants untrained in warfare what was to prevent these young men from pretending to enter into a settlement with Odysseus, then leaping upon him one dark night when his guard was down and doing him to death? It is our contention that, by seizing the only opportunity Fate was likely to afford him, our generally esteemed client

Odysseus was merely acting in self-defence. We therefore ask that you dismiss this case.

Judge: I am inclined to agree.

Attorney for the Defence: Thank you, Your Honour.

Judge: What’s that commotion in the back? Order! Ladies, stop making a spectacle of yourselves! Adjust your clothing! Take those ropes off your necks! Sit down!

The Maids: You’ve forgotten about us! What about our case? You can’t let him off! He hanged us in cold blood! Twelve of us! Twelve young girls! For nothing!

Judge Go Attorney for the Defence. This is a new charge.

Strictly speaking, it ought to be dealt with in a separate trial; but as the two matters appear to be intimately connected, I am prepared to hear arguments now. What do you have to say for your client?

Attorney for the Defence: He was acting within his rights, Your Honour. These were his slaves.

Judge: Nonetheless he must have had some reason. Even slaves ought not to be killed at whim. What had these girls done that they deserved hanging?

Attorney for the Defence: They’d had sex without permission.

Judge: Hmm. I see. With whom did they have the sex?

Attorney for the Defence: With my client’s enemies, Your Honour. The very ones who had designs on his wife, not to mention his life.

(Chuckles at his witticism)

Judge: I take it these were the youngest maids.

Attorney for the Defence: Well, naturally. They were the best-looking and the most beddable, certainly. For the most part.

The Maids laugh bitterly.

Judge (leafing through book: 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. Nobody stopped them from doing so. Also, the maids are described as having been hauled around by the Suitors for their foul and disgusting purposes. Your client knew all that—he is quoted as having said these things himself. Therefore, the maids were overpowered, and they were also completely unprotected.

Is that correct?

Attorney for the Defence; I wasn’t there, Your Honour. All of this took place some three or four thousand years before my time.

Judge: I can see the problem. Call the witness Penelope.

Penelope: I was asleep, Your Honour. I was often asleep. I can only tell you what they said afterwards.

Judge: What who said?

Penelope: The maids, Your Honour.

Judge: They said they been raped?

Penelope: Well, yes, Your Honour. In effect.

Judge: And did you believe them?

Penelope: Yes, Your Honour. That is, I tended to believe them.

Judge: I understand they were frequently impertinent.

Penelope: Yes, Your Honour, but—

Judge: But you did not punish them, and they continued to work as your maids?

Penelope: I knew them well, Your Honour. I was fond of them. I’d brought some of them up, you could say. They were like the daughters I never had. Starts to weep?) I felt so sorry for them! But most maids got raped, sooner or later; a deplorable but common feature of palace life. 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.

Judge (Chuckles). Excuse me, Madam, but isn’t that what rape is? Without permission?

Attorney for the Defence: Without permission of their master, Your Honour.

Judge: Oh. I see. But their master wasn’t present. So, in effect, these maids were forced to sleep with the

Suitors because if they’d resisted they would have been raped anyway, and much more unpleasantly?

Attorney for the Defence: I don’t see what bearing that has on the case.

Judge: Neither did your client, evidently. (Chuckles.) However, your client’s times were not our times. Standards of behaviour were different then. It would be unfortunate if this regrettable but minor incident were allowed to stand as a blot on an otherwise exceedingly distinguished career.

Also I do not wish to be guilty of an anachronism.

Therefore I must dismiss the case.

The Maids: We demand justice! We demand retribution! We invoke the law of blood guilt! We call upon the Angry Ones!

A troop of twelve Erinyes appear. They have hair made of serpents, the heads of dogs, and the wings of bats. They sniff the air.

The Maids: Oh Angry Ones, Oh Furies, you are our last hope! We implore you to inflict punishment and exact vengeance on our behalf! Be our defenders, we who had none in life! Smell out Odysseus wherever he goes! From one place to another, from one life to another, whatever disguise he puts on, whatever shape he may take, hunt him down! Dog his footsteps, on earth or in Hades, wherever he may take refuge, in songs and in plays, in tomes and in theses, in marginal notes and in appendices! Appear to him in our forms, our ruined forms, the forms of our pitiable corpses! Let him never be at rest!

The Erinyes turn towards Odysseus. Their red eyes flash.

Attorney for the Defence: I call on grey-eyed Pallas Athene, immortal daughter of Zeus, to defend property rights and the right of a man to be the master in his own house, and to spirit my client away in a cloud!

Judge: What’s going on? Order! Order! This is a twenty-first-century court of justice! You there, get down from the ceiling! Stop that barking and hissing! Madam, cover up your chest and put down your spear! What’s this cloud doing in here?

Where are the police? Where’s the defendant?

Where has everyone gone?

I was looking in on your world the other night, making use of the eyes of a channeller who’d gone into a trance. Her client wanted to contact her dead boyfriend about whether she should sell their condominium, but they got me instead.

When there’s an opening, I frequently jump in to fill it. I don’t get out as often as I’d like. Not that I mean to disparage my hosts, as it were; but still, it’s amazing how the living keep on pestering the dead. From age to age it hardly changes at all, though the methods vary. I can’t say I miss the Sibyls much them and their golden boughs, hauling along all sorts of upstarts to traipse around down here, wanting knowledge of the future and upsetting the Shades but at least the Sibyls had some manners. The magicians and conjurors who came later were worse, though they did take the whole thing seriously.

Today’s bunch, however, are almost too trivial to merit any attention whatsoever. They want to hear about stock-market prices and world politics and their own health problems and such stupidities; in addition to which they want to converse with a lot of dead nonentities we in this realm cannot be expected to know. Who is this ‘Marilyn’ everyone is so keen on? Who is this ‘Adolf? It’s a waste of energy to spend time with these people, and so exasperating.