I’ve chosen to give the telling of the story to Penelope and to the twelve hanged maids. The maids form a chanting and singing Chorus which focuses on two questions that must pose themselves after any close reading of The Odyssey: what led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? The story as told in The Odyssey doesn’t hold water: there are too many inconsistencies. I’ve always been haunted by the hanged maids; and, in The Penelopiad, so is Penelope herself.
Now that I’m dead I know everything. - P1
Death is much too high a price to pay for the satisfaction of curiosity, needless to say. - P1
Even I believed him, from time to time. I knew he was tricky and a liar, I just didn’t think he would play his tricks and try out his lies on me. Hadn’t I been faithful? Hadn’t I waited, and waited, and waited, despite the temptation – almost the compulsion – to do otherwise? And what did I amount to, once the official version gained ground? An edifying legend. A stick used to beat other women with. Why couldn’t they be as considerate, as trustworthy, as all-suffering as I had been? That was the line they took, the singers, the yarn-spinners. Don’t follow my example, I want to scream in your ears – yes, yours! But when I try to scream, I sound like an owl. - P2
I wanted happy endings in those days, and happy endings are best achieved by keeping the right doors locked and going to sleep during the rampages. - P2
there’s nothing more preposterous than an aristocrat fumbling around with the arts - P3
It’s always an advantage to have something to do with your hands. That way, if someone makes an inappropriate remark, you can pretend you haven’t heard it. Then you don’t have to answer. - P8
I use head figuratively. We have dispensed with heads as such, down here. - P8
The darker grottoes are more interesting – the conversation there is better, if you can find a minor rascal of some sort – a pickpocket, a stockbroker, a small-time pimp. Like a lot of goody-goody girls, I was always secretly attracted to men of that kind. - P15
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