Despite this, she has very little power within her own home, where Odysseus calls the shots. Penelope is an extremely wealthy noble who has enjoyed a considerable amount of privilege throughout her life. Gender plays an important role in how the characters relate to each other in the Penelopiad. 'Now that the others have run out of air,' she says, 'it's my turn to do a little story-making. She tells her story from the Underworld, centuries after her death. The Penelopiad allows Penelope to challenge the 'official version' and explain how and why she did what she did while she was alive. Additionally, she keeps an entire kingdom in line while Odysseus is away and yet is rarely given the credit she deserves. As Penelope explains in the Penelopiad, however, the truth is that she suffered greatly and had very little power to make decisions for herself. Penelope's faithfulness and docility have been famous for centuries, celebrated within the patriarchy as a picture of an 'ideal' wife or woman. A stick used to beat other women with' (2).

Penelope disparages the way that she has been seen for centuries and suggests that it has reinforced sexism: 'And what did I amount to, once the official version gained ground? An edifying legend. While in the Odyssey, Penelope is a secondary character who is not much examined, Atwood gives her narrative center stage. The novel is Penelope's version of events, and it follows on centuries of scholarship about the male-dominated narrative of the Odyssey. Storytelling is perhaps the most important theme in the Penelopiad.

Atwood the penelopiad