The Penelopiad

The book makes frequent references to how both class and gender impact the treatment of the characters, both during their lives and in their legacy. The maids emphasize how little value their lives have; they are no better than animals. They may be raped and used by men of higher standing in whatever way they wish, as long as their masters give permission. They are not entitled to fortune or marriage, which even for Penelope, a noble woman, reduces a woman to little more than a “package of meat” used to give birth to sons.

While Odysseus’s cleverness makes him a legendary hero, Penelope’s intellect only gives her survival, and her cleverness is largely wiped from mythology. While any clever act on Odysseus’s part is exaggerated and lauded, her acts of cleverness are dismissed as divine intervention.

While the gods of ancient Greece have always been portrayed as flawed creatures, in Penelope’s account, they are described as nothing more than hedonists and sadists. They are described as unable to “keep their hands or paws or beaks off mortal women, they were always raping someone or other” (20) and Penelope says the “the gods were never averse to making a mess.