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Details
The Penelopiad:
The Penelopaid is a book that re-invents the myth of Homer’s Odyssey, only it is through the eyes of his wife Penelope instead. In her retelling of the story, it actively engages readers to think of the difference between story telling and the truth as it focuses on the hardships and heartbreaks of women in ancient Greece. It gives the readers a sense of how Penelope feels about the expectations of women. The book talks about issues such as women being told they need to be always the prettiest one. It causes lots of toxic behaviors and argument between women that should be supporting one another instead of bringing each other down. For example, there is a big part about how Helen is very beautiful and gets a lot of males’ attention which causes Penelope to be angry and jealous of her. Another topic they discuss is how every little detail about women and how they act is being critiqued. For example, Penelope’s mother-in-law is constantly judging her by her performance as a wife and giving her standards to live up to that she can’t. It depicts that women are always having to pretend to be perfect instead of just being themselves. Another very touchy subject they discuss is the matter of rape. Penelope and the maids sadly find it pretty common there and usually they do not get punished for doing it. The maids had to suffer a lot from that physically and emotionally. The maids went through a very rough time because they were not only raped, but also murdered for being so even though it wasn’t their fault. It was difficult to hear this because it was not consented and yet their social status is what left them unprotected from the bad men. In the end, this had a huge theme of how women were impacted then and how social class determined the trauma and violence they went through even though they didn’t deserve it. |