The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood.
Title: The Penelopiad.
Author: Margaret Atwood.
Genre: Fiction, mythology, myths retold, fantasy, satire, feminism.
Country: Canada.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2005.
Summary: For Penelope, wife of Odysseus, maintaining a kingdom while her husband fights in the Trojan war is not a simple business. Already aggrieved that he has been lured away due to the shocking behaviour of her beautiful cousin Helen, Penelope must bring up her wayward son, face down scandalous rumours, and keep over a hundred lustful, greedy, and bloodthirsty suitors at bay... And then, when Odysseus finally returns and slaughters the murderous suitors, he brutally hangs Penelope's twelve beloved maids. What were his motives? And what was Penelope herself up to?
My rating: 6.5/10
My review:
♥ The book draws to an end with the slaughter of the Suitors by Odysseus and Telemachus, the hanging of twelve of the maids who have been sleeping with the Suitors, and the reunion of Odysseus and Penelope.
But Homer's Odyssey is not the only version of the story. Mythic material was originally total, and also local - a myth would be told one way in one place and quite differently in another. I have drawn on material other than The Odyssey, especially for the details of Penelope's parentage, her early life and marriage, and the scandalous rumours circulating about her.
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.
~~from Introduction.
♥ Now that I'm dead I know everything. This is what I wished would happen, but like so many of my wishes it failed to come true. I know only a few factoids that I didn't know before. Death is much too high a price to pay for the satisfaction of curiosity, needless to say.
♥ Down here everyone arrives with a sack, like the sacks used to keep the winds in, but each of these sacks is full of words - words you've spoken, words you've heard, words that have been said about you. Some sacks are very small, others large; my own is of a reasonable size, though a lot of the words in it concern my eminent husband. What a fool he made of me, some say. It was a specialty of his: making fools. He got away with everything, which was another of his specialties: getting away.
He was always so plausible. Many people have believed that this version of events was the true one, give or take a few murders, a few beautiful seductresses, a few one-eyed monsters. 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.
♥ I didn't contradict, I didn't ask awkward questions, I didn't dig deep. 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.
♥ we are the maids
the ones you killed
the ones you failed
we danced in air
our bare feet twitched
it was not fair
with every goddess, queen, and bitch
from there to here
you scratched your itch
we did much less
than what you did
you judges us bad
you had the spear
you had the word
at your command
we scrubbed the blood
of our dead
paramours from floors, from chairs
from stairs, from doors,
we knelt in water
while you stared
at our bare feet
it was not fair
you licked our fear
it gave you pleasure
you raised your hand
you watched us fall
we danced on air
the ones you failed
the ones you killed
♥ My mother was a Naiad. Daughters of Naiads were a dime a dozen in those days; the place was crawling with them. Nevertheless, it never hurts to be of semi-divine birth. Or it never hurts immediately.
♥ But he must have misheard, or else the oracle herself misheard - the gods often mumble..
♥ We too were children. We too were born to the wrong parents. Poor parents, slave parents, peasant parents, and serf parents; parents who sold us, parents from whom we were stolen. These parents were not gods, they were not demi-gods, they were not nymphs or Naiads. We were set to work in the palace, as children; we drudged from dawn to dusk, as children. If we wept, no one dried our tears. If we slept, we were kicked awake. We were told we were motherless. We were told we were fatherless. We were told we were lazy. We were told we were dirty. We were dirty. Dirt was our concern, dirt was our business, dirt was our specialty, dirt was our fault. We were the dirty girls. If our owners or the sons of our owners or a visiting nobleman or the sons of a visiting nobleman wanted to sleep with us, we could not refuse. It did us no good to weep, it did us no good to say we were in pain. All this happened to us when we were children. If we were pretty children our lives were worse. We ground the flour for lavish wedding feasts, then we ate the leftovers; we would never have a wedding feast of our own, no rich gifts would be exchanged for us; our bodies had little value. But we wanted to sing and dance too, we wanted to be happy too. As we grew older we became polished and evasive, we mastered the secret sneer. We swayed our hips, we lurked, we winked, we signalled with our eyebrows, even when we were children; we met boys behind the pigpens, noble boys and ignoble boys alike. We rolled around in the straw, in the mud, in the dung, on the beds of soft fleece we were making up for our masters. We drank the wine left in the wine cups. We spat onto the serving platters. Between the bright hall and the dark scullery we crammed filched meat into our mouths. We laughed together in our attics, in our nights. We snatched what we could.
♥ Once upon a time, anyone who wished to consult us would slit the throat of a sheep or cow or pig and let the blood flow into a trench in the ground. We'd smell it and make a beeline for the site, like flies to a carcass. There we'd be, chirping and fluttering, thousands of us, like the contents of a giant wastepaper basket caught in a tornado, while some self-styled hero held us off with drawn sword until the one he wanted to consult appeared. A few vague prophecies would be forthcoming: we learned to keep them vague. Why tell everything? You needed to keep them coming back for more, with other sheep, cows, pigs, and so forth.
Once the right number of words had been handed over to the hero we'd all be allowed to drink from the trench, and I can't say much in praise of the table manners on such occasions. There was a lot of pushing and shoving, a lot of slurping and spilling; there were a lot of crimson chins. However, it was glorious to feel the blood coursing in our non-existent veins again, if only for an instant.
We could sometimes appear as dreams, though that wasn't as satisfactory. Then there were those who got stuck on the wrong side of the river because they hadn't been given proper burials. They wandered around in a very unhappy state, neither here nor there, and they could cause a lot of trouble.
♥ Helen was much in demand. It didn't seem fair - I wasn't known for doing anything notorious, especially of a sexual nature, and she was nothing if not infamous. Of course she was very beautiful. It was claimed she'd come out of an egg, being the daughter of Zeus who'd raped her mother in the form of a swan. She was quite stuck-up about it, was Helen. I wonder how many of us really believed that swan-rape concoction? There were a lot of stories of that kind going around then - the gods couldn't seem to keep their hands or paws or beaks off mortal women, they were always raping someone or other.
♥ As for me... well, people told me I was beautiful, they had to tell me that because I was a princess, and shortly after that queen, but the truth was that although I was not deformed or ugly, I was nothing special to look at. I was smart, though: considering the times, very smart. That seems to be what I was known for: being smart. That, and my weaving, and my devotion to my husband, and my discretion.
♥ Immortality and mortality didn't mix well: wit was fire and mud, only the fire always won.
♥ Marriages. Marriages were for having children, and children were not toys and pets. Children were vehicles for passing things along. These things could be kingdoms, rich wedding gifts, stories, grudges, blood feuds. Through children, alliances were forged; through children, wrongs were avenged. To have a child was to set loose a force in the world.
♥ The man who won the contest got the woman and the wedding, and was then expected to stay at the bride's father's palace and contribute his share of male offspring. He obtained wealth through the marriage - gold cups, silver bowls, horses, robes, weapons, all that trash they used to value so much back when I was alive. His family was expected to hand over a lot of this trash as well.
I can say trash because I know where most of it ended up. It mouldered away in the ground or it sank to the bottom of the sea, or it got broken or melted down. Some of it made its way to enormous palaces that have - strangely - no kings or queens in them. Endless processions of people in graceless clothing file through these palaces, staring at the gold cups and the silver bowls, which are not even used any more. Then they go to a sort of market beside the palace and buy pictures of these things, or miniature versions of them that are not real silver and gold. That is why I say trash.
♥ I was a kind girl - kinder than Helen, or so I thought. I knew I would have to have something to offer instead of beauty. I was clever, everyone said so - in fact they said it so much that I found it discouraging - but cleverness is a quality a man likes to have in his wife as long as she is some distance away from him. Up close, he'll take kindness any day of the week, if there's nothing more alluring to be had.
♥ And so I was handed over to Odysseus, like a package of meat. A package of meat in a wrapping of gold, mind you. A sort of gilded blood pudding.
♥ The gods wanted meat as much as we did, but all they ever got from us was the bones and fat, thanks to a bit of rudimentary slight of hand by Prometheus: only an idiot would have been deceived by a bag of bad cow parts disguised as good ones, and Zeus was deceived; which goes to show that the gods were not always as intelligent as they wanted us to believe.
I can say this now because I'm dead. I wouldn't have dared to say it earlier. You could never tell when one of the gods might be listening, disguised as a beggar or an old friend or a stranger. It's true that I sometimes doubted their existence, these gods. But during my lifetime I considered it prudent not to take any risks.
♥ It was amazing that the guests didn't burst on the spot, they stuffed themselves so full. Nothing helps gluttony along so well as eating food you don't have to pay for yourself, as I learned from later experience.
♥ She did make a little speech to me as the maids were changing my costume yet again, but I didn't consider it to be a helpful one at the time. It was nothing if not oblique; but then, all Naiads are oblique.
Here is what she said:
Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.
♥ No, Odysseus wanted to talk, and as he was an excellent raconteur I was happy to listen. I think this is what he valued most in me: my ability to appreciate his stories. It's an underrated talent in women.
♥ So by the time the morning came, Odysseus and I were indeed friends, as Odysseus had promised we would be. Or let me put it another way: I myself had developed friendly feelings towards him - more than that, loving and passionate ones - and he behaved as if he reciprocated them. Which is not quite the same thing.
♥ Chorus:
Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave -
The water below is as dark as the grave,
And maybe you'll sink in your little blue boat -
It's hope, and hope only, that keeps us afloat.
♥ He told me once that everyone had a hidden door, which was the way into the heart, and that it was a point of honour with him to be able to find the handles to those doors. For the heart was both key and lock, and he who could master the hearts of men and learn their secrets was well on the way to mastering the Fates and controlling the thread of his own destiny. Not, he hastened to add, that any man could really do that. Not even the gods, he said, were more powerful than the Three Fatal Sisters. He did not mention them by name, but spat to avoid bad luck; and I shivered to think of them in their glum cave, spinning out lives, measuring them, cutting them off.
♥ The woman who gave me the most trouble at first was Odysseus's former nurse, Eurycleia. She was widely respected - according to her - because she was so intensely reliable. She'd been in the household ever since Odysseus's father had bought her, and so highly had he valued her that he hadn't even slept with her.
♥ For his birth was longed-for and feasted, as our births were not.
His mother presented a princeling. Our various mothers
Spawned merely, lambed, farrowed, littered,
Foaled, whelped and kittened, brooded, hatched out their clutch.
We were animal young, to be disposed of at will,
Sold, drowned in the well, traded, used, discarded when bloomless.
He was fathered; we simply appeared,
Like the crocus, the rose, the sparrows engendered in mud.
Our lives were twisted in his life; we also were children
When he was a child,
We were his pets and his toythings, mock sisters, his tiny companions.
♥ ..and far too many fraught silences encircling my mother-in-law. When I tried to speak to her she would never look at me while answering, but would address her remarks to a footstool or a table. As befitted conversation with the furniture, these remark were wooden and stiff.
♥ I've often wondered whether, if Helen hadn't been so puffed up with vanity, we might all have been spared the sufferings and sorrows she brought down on our heads by her selfishness and her deranged lust. Why couldn't she have led a normal life? But no - normal lives were boring, and Helen was ambitious. She wanted to make a name for herself. She longed to stand out from the herd.
♥ I repressed a desire to say tat Helen should have been kept in a locked trunk in a dark cellar because she was poison on legs. Instead I said, "Will you have to go?" I was devastated at the thought of having to stay in Ithaca without Odysseus.
♥ So then he had to go.
The other three flattered him by saying an oracle had decreed that Troy could not fall without his help. That eased his preparations for departure, naturally. Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable?
♥ What can I tell you about the next ten years? Odysseus sailed away to Troy. I stayed in Ithaca. The sun rose, travelled across the sky, set. Only sometimes did I think of it as the flaming chariot of Helios. The moon did the same, changing from phase to phase. Only sometimes did I think of it as the silver boat of Artemis. Spring, summer, fall, and winter followed one another in their appointed rounds. Quite often the wind blew. Telemachus grew from year to year, eating a lot of meat, indulged by all.
♥ And then, finally, the hoped-for news arrived: the Greek ships had set sail for home.
And then, nothing.
♥ Rumours came, carried by other ships. Odysseus and his men had got drunk at their first port of call and the men had mutinied, said some; no, said others, they'd eaten a magic plant that had caused them to lose their memories, and Odysseus had saved them by having them tied up and carried onto the ships. Odysseus had been in a fight with a giant one-eyed Cyclops, said some; no, it was only a one-eyed tavern keeper, said another, and the fight was over non-payment of the bill. Some of the men had been eaten by cannibals, said some; no, it was just a brawl of the usual kind, said others, with ear-bitings and nosebleeds and stabbings and eviscerations. Odysseus was the guest of a goddess on an enchanted isle, said some; she'd turned his men into pigs - not a hard job in my view - but had turned them back into men because she'd fallen in love with him and was feeding him unheard-of delicacies prepared by her own immortal hands, and the two of them made love deliriously every night; no, said others, it was just an expensive whorehouse, and he was sponging off the Madam.
Needless to say, the minstrels took up these themes and embroidered them considerably. They always sang the noblest versions in my presence - the ones in which Odysseus was clever, brave, and resourceful, and battling supernatural monsters, and beloved of goddesses. The only reason he hadn't come back home was that a god - the sea-god Poseidon, according to some - was against him, because a Cyclops crippled by Odysseus was his son. Or several gods were against him. Or the Fates. Or something. For surely - the minstrels implied, by way of praising me - only a strong divine power could keep my husband from rushing back as quickly as possible into my loving - and lovely - wifely arms.
The more thickly they laid it on, the more costly were the gifts they expected from me. I always complied. Even an obvious fabrication is some comfort when you have few others.
..Odysseus had been to the Land of the Dead to consult the spirits, said some. No, he'd merely spent the night in a gloomy old cave full of bats, said others. He'd made his men put wax in their ears, said one, while sailing past the alluring Sirens - half-bird, half-woman - who enticed men to their island and then ate them, though he'd tied himself to the mast so he could listen to their irresistible singing without jumping overboard. No, said another, it was a high-class Sicilian knocking shop - the courtesans there were known for their musical talents and their fancy feathered outfits.
♥ Mistress lazy, slaves get bold,
Will not do what they are told,
Act the thief or whore or knave:
Spare the rod and spoil the slave!
♥ There is a certain zest to be had in tormenting the vulnerable.
♥ Antinous sighed. "The gods wanted to destroy us," he said.
"That's everyone's excuse for behaving badly," I said. "Tell me the truth. It was hardly my divine beauty. I was thirty-five years old by the end of it, worn out with care and weeping, and as we both know I was getting quite fat around the middle. You Suitors weren't born when Odysseus set out for Troy, or else you were mere babies like my son, Telemachus, or you were children at the very most, so for all practical purposes I was old enough to be your mother. You babbled on about how I made your knees melt and how you longed to have me share your bed and bear your children, yet you knew perfectly well that I was all but past child-bearing age."
"You could probably have still squeezed out one or two little brats," Antinous replied nastily. Her could barely suppress a smirk.
"That's more like it," I said. "I prefer straightforward answers. So, what was your real motive?"
"We wanted the treasure trove, naturally," he said. "Not to mention the kingdom." This time he had the impudence to laugh outright. "What young man wouldn't want to marry a rich and famous widow? Widows are supposed to be consumed with lust, especially if their husbands have been missing or dead for such a long time, as yours was. You weren't exactly a Helen, but we could have dealt with that. The darkness conceals much! All the better that you were twenty years older than us - you'd die first, perhaps with a little help, and then, furnished with your wealth, we could have had our pick of any young and beautiful princess we wanted. You didn't really think we were maddened by love for you, did you? You may not have been much to look at, but you were always intelligent."
♥ They said they would continue in this manner until I chose one of them as my new husband, so they punctuated their drunken parties and merry-making with moronic speeches about my ravishing beauty and my excellence and wisdom.
I can't pretend that I didn't enjoy a certain amount of this. Everyone does; we all like to hear songs in our praise, even if we don't believe them. But I tried to view their antics as one might view a spectacle or a piece of buffoonery.
♥ Really, the best solution for him would have been a graceful death on my part, one for which he was in no way to blame. For if he did as Orestes had done - but with no cause, unlike Orestes - and murdered his mother, he would attract the Erinyes - the dreaded Furies, snake-haired, dog-headed, bat-winged - and they would pursue him with their barking and hissing and their whips and scourges until they had driven him insane. And since he would have killed me in cold blood, and for the basest of motives - the acquisition of wealth - it would be impossible for him to obtain purification at my shrine, and he would be polluted with my blood until he died a horrible death in a state of raving madness.
A mother's life is sacred. Even a badly behaved mother's life is sacred - witness my foul cousin Clytemnestra, adulteress, butcher of her husband, tormenter of her children - and nobody said I was a badly behaved mother. But I did not appreciate the barrage of surly monosyllables and resentful glances I was getting from my own son.
♥ When telling the story later I used to say that it was Pallas Athene, goddess of weaving, who'd given me this idea, and perhaps this was true, for all I know; but crediting some god for one's inspirations was always a good way to avoid accusations of pride should the scheme succeed, as well as the blame if it did not.
♥ To help me in this laborious task I chose twelve of my maidservants - the youngest ones, because these had been with me all their lives. I had bought them or acquired them when they were small children, brought them up as playmates for Telemachus, and trained them carefully in everything they would need to know around the palace. They were pleasant girls, full of energy; they were a little loud and giggly sometimes, as all maids are in youth, but it cheered me up to hear them chattering away, and to listen to their singing. They had lovely voices, all of them, and they had been taught well how to use them.
They were my most trusted eyes and ears in the palace, and it was they who helped me to pick away at my weaving, behind locked doors, at dead of night, and by torchlight, for more than three years. Though we had to do it carefully, and talk in whispers, these nights had a touch of festivity about them, a touch - even - of hilarity. Melantho of the Pretty Cheeks smuggled in treats for us to nibble on - figs in season, bread dipped in honeycomb, heated wine in winter. We told stories as we worked away at our task of destruction; we shared riddles; we made jokes. In the flickering light of the torches our daylight faces were softened and changed, and our daylight manners. We were almost like sisters. In the mornings, our eyes darkened by lack of sleep, we'd exchange smiles of complicity, and here and there a quick squeeze of the hand. Their "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 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.
♥ But 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.
♥ So much for the gods not wanting me to suffer. They all tease. I might as well have been a stray dog, pelted with stones or with its tail set alight for their amusement. Not the fat and bones of animals, but our suffering is what they love to savour.
♥ What could I do but burst into tears?
I then made then Is-this-all-the-thanks-I-get, you-have-no-idea-what-I've-been-through-for-your-sake, no-woman-should-have-to-put-up-with-this-sort-of-suffering, I-might-as-well-kill-myself speech. But I'm afraid he'd hear it before, and showed by his folded arms and rolled-up eyes that he was irritated by it, and was waiting for me to finish.
That done, we settled down.
♥ It's hard to lose an argument to one's teenaged son. Once they're taller than you are, you have only your moral authority: a weak weapon at best.
♥ After dropping in on King Nestor, who could tell him nothing, he'd gone off to visit Menelaus. Menelaus himself. Menelaus the rich, Menelaus the thickhead, Menelaus of the loud voice, Menelaus the cuckold. Menelaus, the husband of Helen - cousin Helen, Helen the lovely, Helen the septic bitch, root cause of all my misfortunes.
♥ He then launched into some rigmarole about the Old Man of the Sea, and how Menelaus had learned from this elderly and dubious-sounding gentleman that Odysseus was trapped on the island of a beautiful goddess, where he was forced to make love with her all night, every night.
By this time I'd heard one beautiful-goddess story too many.
♥ I knew he was lying, but was touched that he was lying for my sake. Not for nothing was he the great-grandson of Autolycus, friend of Hermes the arch-cheat, and the son of wily Odysseus of the soothing voice, fruitful in false invention, persuader of men and deluder of women. Maybe he had some brains after all.
♥ Who is to say that prayers have any effect? On the other hand, who is to say they don't? I picture the gods, diddling around on Olympus, wallowing in the nectar and ambrosia and the aroma of burning bones and fat, mischievous as a pack of ten-year-olds with a sick cat to play with and a lot of time on their hands. "Which prayer shall we answer today?" they ask one another. "Let's cast dice! Hope for this one, despair for that one, and while we're at it, let's destroy the life of that woman over there by having sex with her in the form of a crayfish!" I think they pull a lot of their pranks because they're bored.
♥ I didn't let on I knew. It would have been dangerous for him. Also, if a man takes pride in his disguising skills, it would be a foolish wife who would claim to recognize him: it's always an imprudence to step between a man and the reflection of his own cleverness.
♥ The songs claim that the arrival of Odysseus and my decision to set the test of the bow and axes coincided by accident - or by divine plan, which was our way of putting it then. Now you've heard the plain truth. I knew that only Odysseus would be able to perform this archery trick. I knew that the beggar was Odysseus. There was no coincidence. I set the whole thing up on purpose.
♥ Odysseus-the-beggar interpreted this dream for me: the eagle was my husband, the geese were the Suitors, and the one would shortly slay the others. He said nothing about the crooked beak of the eagle, or my love for the geese and my anguish at their deaths.
In the event, Odysseus was wrong about the dream. He was indeed the eagle, but the geese were not the Suitors. The geese were my twelve maids, as I was soon to learn to my unending sorrow.
♥ The songs say I didn't notice a thing because Athene had distracted me. If you believe that, you'll believe all sorts of nonsense. In reality I'd turned my back on the two of them to hide my silent laughter at the success of my little surprise.
♥ As we approach the climax, grim and gory,
Let us just say: There is another story.
Or several, as befits the goddess Rumour,
Who's sometimes in a good, or else bad, humour.
..Penelope:
And now, dear Nurse, the fat is in the fire -
He'll chop me up for tending my desire!
While he was pleasuring every nymph and beauty,
Did he think I'd do nothing but my duty?
While every girl and goddess he was praising,
Did he assume I'd dry up like a raisin?
Eurycleia:
While you your famous loom claimed to be threading,
In fact you were at work within the bedding!
And now there's ample matter for - beheading!
Penelope:
Amphinomus - quick! Down the hidden stairs!
And I'll sit here, and feign great woes and cares.
Which of the maids is in on my affairs?
Eurycleia:
Only the twelve, my lady, who assisted,
Know that the Suitors you have not resisted.
They smuggled lovers in and out all night;
They drew the drapes, and then they held the light.
They're privy to your every lawless thrill -
They must be silenced, or the beans they'll spill!
Penelope:
Oh then, dear Nurse, it's really up to you
To save me, and Odysseus' honour too!
Because he sucked at your now-ancient bust,
You are the only one of us he'll trust.
Point out those maids as feckless and disloyal,
Snatched by the Suitors as unlawful spoil,
Polluted, shameless, and not fit to be
The doting slaves of such a Lord as he!
Eurycleia:
We'll stop their mouths by sending them to Hades -
He'll string them up as grubby wicked ladies!
Penelope:
And I in fame a model wife shall rest -
All husbands will look on, and think him blessed!
But haste - the Suitors come to do their wooing,
Ad I, for my part, must begin boo-hooing!
The Chorus Line, in tap-dance shoes:
Blame it on the maids!
Those naughty little jades!
Hang them high and don't ask why -
Blame it on the maids!
Blame it on the slaves!
The toys of rogues and knaves!
Let them dangle, let them strangle -
Blame it on the slaves!
Blame it on the sluts!
Those poxy little sluts!
We've got the dirt on every skirt -
Blame it on the sluts!
They all curtsy.
♥ "Desire does not die with the body," said Helen. "Only the ability to satisfy it. But a glimpse or two does perk them up, the poor lambs."
"It gives them a reason to live," I said.
"You're being witty," said Helen. "Better late than never, I suppose."
♥ Eurycleia told me how she and the other women had cowered near the locked door, listening to the shouts and the sounds of breaking furniture, and the groans of the dying. She then described the horror that happened next.
Odysseus summoned her, and ordered her to point out the maids who had been, as he called it, "disloyal". He forced the girls to haul the dead bodies of the Suitors out into the courtyard - including the bodies of their erstwhile lovers - and to wash the brains and gore off the floor, and to clean whatever chairs and tables remained intact.
Then - Eurycleia continued - he told Telemachus to chop the maids into pieces with the sword. But my son, wanting to assert himself to his father, and to show that he knew better - he was at that age - hanged them all in a row from a ship's hawser.
Right after that, said Eurycleia - who could not disguise her gloating pleasure - Odysseus and Telemachus hacked off the ears and nose and hands and feet and genitals of Melanthius the evil goatherd and threw them to the dogs, paying no attention to the poor man's agonized screams. "They had to make an example of him," said Eurycleia, "to discourage any further defections."
"But which maids?" I cried, beginning to shed tears. "Dear gods - which maids did they hang?"
"Mistress, dear child," said Eurycleia, anticipating my displeasure, "he wanted to kill them all! I had to choose some - otherwise all would have perished!"
"Which ones?" I said, trying to control my emotions.
"Only twelve," she faltered. "The impertinent ones. The ones who'd been rude. The ones who used to thumb their noses at me. Melantho of the Pretty Cheeks and her cronies - that lot. They were notorious whores."
"The ones who'd been raped," I said. "The youngest. The most beautiful." My eyes and ears among the Suitors, I did not add. My helpers during the long nights of the shroud. My snow-white geese. My thrushes, my doves.
It was my fault! I hadn't told her of my scheme.
"They let it go to their heads," said Eurycleia defensively. "It wouldn't have done for King Odysseus to allow such impertinent girls to continue to serve in the palace. He could never have trusted them. Now come downstairs, dear child. Your husband is waiting to see you."
What could I do? Lamentation wouldn't bring my lovely girls back to life. I bit my tongue. It's a wonder I had any tongue left, so frequently had I bitten it over the years.
Dead is dead, I told myself. I'll say prayers and perform sacrifices for their souls. But I'll have to do is in secret, or Odysseus will suspect me, as well.
♥ Presented by: The Maids
What is it that our umber, the number of the maids - the number twelve - suggests to the educated mind? There are twelve apostles, there are twelve days of Christmas, yes, but there are twelve months, and what does the word month suggest to the educated mind? Yes? You, Sir, in the back? Correct! Month comes from moon, as everyone knows. Oh, it is no coincidence, no coincidence at all, that there were twelve of us, not eleven and not thirteen, and not the proverbial eight maids a-milking!
For we were not simply maids. We were not mere slaves and drudges. Oh no! Surely we had a higher function than that! Could it be that we were not the twelve maids, but the twelve maidens? The twelve moon-maidens, companions of Artemis, virginal but deadly goddess of the moon? Could it be that we were ritual sacrifices, devoted priestesses doing our part, first by indulging in orgiastic fertility-rite behaviour with the Suitors, then purifying ourselves by washing ourselves in the blood of the slain male victims - such heaps of them, what an honour to the Goddess! - and renewing our virginity, as Artemis renewed hers by bathing in a spring dyed with the blood of Actaeon? We would then have willingly sacrificed ourselves, as was necessary, re-enacting the dark-of-the-moon phase, in order that the whole cycle might begin again and the silvery new-moon-goddess rise once more. Why should Iphigenia be credited with selflessness and devotion, more than we?
This reading of the events in question ties in - excuse the play on words - with the ship's hawser from which we dangled, for the new moon is a boat. And then there's the bow that figures so prominently in the story - the curved old-moon bow of Artemis, used to shoot an arrow through twelve axe-heads - twelve! The arrow passed through the loops of their handles, the round, moon-shaped loops! And the hanging itself - think, dear educated minds, of the significance of the hanging! Above the earth, up in the air, connected to the moon-governed sea by an umbilical boat-linked rope - oh, there are too many clues for your to miss it!
What's that, Sir? You in the back? Yes, correct, the number of lunar months is indeed thirteen, so there ought to have been thirteen of us. Therefore, you say - smugly, we might add - that our theory about ourselves is incorrect, since we were only twelve. But wait - there were in fact thirteen! The thirteenth was our High Priestess, the incarnation of Artemis herself. She was none other than - yes! Queen Penelope!
Thus possibly our rape and subsequent hanging represent the overthrow of a matrilineal moon-cult by an incoming group of usurping patriarchal father-god-worshipping barbarians. The chief of them, notably Odysseus, would then claim kingship by marrying the High Priestess of our cult, namely Penelope.
No, Sir, we deny that this theory is merely unfounded feminist claptrap. We can understand your reluctance to have such things brought out into the open - rapes and murders are not pleasant subjects - but such overthrows most certainly took place all around the Mediterranean Sea, as excavations at prehistoric sites have demonstrated over and over.
Surely those axes, so significantly not used as weapons in the ensuing slaughter, so significantly never explained in any satisfactory way by three thousand years of commentary - surely they must have been the double-bladed ritual labrys axes associated with the Great Mother cult among the Minoans, the axes used to lop off the head of the Year King at the end of his term of thirteen lunar months! For the rebelling Year King to use Her own bow to shoot an arrow through Her own ritual life-and-death axes, in order to demonstrate his power over Her - what a desecration! Just as the patriarchal penis takes it upon itself to unilaterally shoot through the... But we're getting carried away here.
Is the pre-patriarchal scheme of things, there may well have been a bow-shooting contest, but it would have been properly conducted. He who won it would be declared ritual king for a year, and would then be hanged - remember the Hanged Man motif, which survives now only as a lowly Tarot card. He would also have had his genitals torn off, as befits a male drone married to the Queen Bee. Both acts, the hanging and the genital-tearing-off, would have ensured the fertility of the crops. But usurping strongman Odysseus refused to die at the end of his rightful term. Greedy for prolonged life and power, he found substitutes. Genitals were indeed torn off, but they were not his - they belonged to the goatherd Melanthius. Hanging did indeed take place, but it was we, the twelve moon-maidens, who did the swinging in his place.
We could go on. Would you like to see some vase paintings, some carved Goddess cult objects? No? Never mind. Point being that you don't have to get too worked up about us, dear educated minds. You don't have to think of us as real girls, real flesh and blood, real pain, real injustice. That might be too upsetting. Just discard the sordid part. Consider us pure symbol. We're no more real than money.
♥ "We're not spring chickens any more," I said.
"That which we are, we are," said Odysseus.
♥ Odysseys told me of all his travels and difficulties - the nobler versions, with the monsters and the goddesses, rather than the more sordid ones with the innkeepers and whores. He recounted the many lies he'd invented, the false names he'd given himself - telling the Cyclops his name was No One was the cleverest of such tricks, though he'd spoiled it by boasting - and the fraudulent life histories he'd concocted for himself, the better to conceal his identity and his intentions.
..Then he told me how much he'd missed me, and how he'd been filled with longing for me even when enfolded in the white arms of goddesses; and I told him how very may tears I'd shed while waiting twenty years for his return, and how tediously faithful I'd been, and how I would never have even so much as thought of betraying his gigantic bed with its wondrous bedpost by sleeping in it with any other man.
The two of us were - by our own admission- proficient and shameless liars of long standing. It's a wonder either one of us believed a word the other said.
But we did.
Or so we told each other.
♥ It was a likely story. But then, all of [Odysseus]'s stories were likely.
♥ 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: 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 understand the interpretation of the whole Trojan War episode has changed," I tell [Helen], to take some of the wind out of her sails. "Now they think you were just a myth. It was all about trade routes. That's what the scholars are saying."
♥ Even with my limited access I can see that the world is just as dangerous as it was in my day, except that the misery and suffering are on a much wider scale. As for human nature, it's as tawdry as ever.
♥ ..and then, just when I'm starting to relax, when I'm feeling that I can forgive him for everything he put me trough and accept him with all his faults, when I'm starting to believe that this time he really means it, off he goes again, making a beeline for the River Lethe to be born again.
He does mean it. He really does. He wants to be with me. He weeps when he says it. But then some force tears us apart.
It's the maids. He sees them in the distance, heading our way. They make him nervous. They make him restless. They cause him pain. They make him want to be anywhere and anyone else.
.."Why can't you leave him alone?" I yell at the maids. I have to yell because they won't let me get near them. "Surely it's enough! He did penance, he said the prayers, he got himself purified!"
"It's not enough for us," they call.
"What more do you wan from him?" I ask them. By this time I'm crying. "Just tell me!"
But they only run away.
Run isn't quite accurate. Their legs don't move. Their still-twitching feet don't touch the ground.
♥ You roped us in, you strung us up, you left us dangling like clothes on a line. What hijinks! What kicks! How virtuous you felt, how righteous, how purified, now tat you'd got rid of the plump young dirty dirt-girls inside your head!
You should have buried us properly. You should have poured wine over us. You should have prayed for our forgiveness.
Now you can't get rid of us, wherever you go: in your life or your afterlife or any of your other lives.
We can see through all your disguises: the paths of day, the paths of darkness, whichever paths you take - we're right behind you, following you like a trail of smoke, like a long tail, a tail made of girls, heavy as memory, light as air: twelve accusations, toes skimming the ground, hands tied behind our backs, tongues sticking out, eyes bulging, songs choked in our throats.