The Penelopiad
Margaret Atwood

This wry retelling of The Odyssey looks at the story from Penelope’s perspective. Atwood fills in the blanks that Homer leaves in his story and at the same time comments on storytelling, justice, and the successes and failures of sisterhood.

Major thematic elements: sisterhood, perspectives, justice, storytelling.

IB Literature and IB Language and Literature Connections

Place of publication: Canada
Language: English
Era: 21st Century
Genre: Fiction
Author: Female

Readers, writers and texts | Time and space | Intertextuality: Connecting texts

Identity | Culture | Creativity | Communication
Perspective | Transformation | Representation

Full text, basic summaries, and overviews

Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason | PBS | Excerpt from The Penelopiad
This extract is short enough to work with in class as a Close Reading activity and long enough to give readers a sense of the tone and style of the novel. The extract is from the beginning of chapter twelve, “Waiting.”
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Seana McKenna on Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad | YouTube | GrandTheatre | January 30, 2019 | 3:29
Though McKenna is interviewed in relation to the drama production of The Penelopiad, this is a great overview of why Penelope’s story matters.
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The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus | Quill & Quire | Book Review by Heather Birrell
Part review and part summary, this eight-paragraph article on The Penelopiad discusses both what happens and what makes Atwood’s writing style notable in this novel.
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Study Guides for The Penelopiad
Both CourseHero and SparkNotes have detailed study guides for The Penelopiad. Contents vary slightly, but both are free and full of resources.
CourseHero Study Guide SparkNotes Study Guide

The Penelopiad audiobook | YouTube | Miriam Mejia | 2:48:12
This is a complete audiobook, but read by what sounds like student voices. The pace is somewhat slower than a traditional audiobook and there are occasional lapses in pronunciation, pacing, and clarity.
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The Penelopiad | Wikipedia
This Wikipedia page includes information about the text itself (plot, style, themes, etc.) but also details about its influences, publication, reception and theatrical adaptation. A solid starting point if you’re putting together a unit on this novel.
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About the author

For information about Margaret Atwood, please see our page on The Handmaid’s Tale.

Articles, essays, and videos about The Penelopiad

A Heroine in Her Own Right: A Character Analysis of Penelope in The Penelopiad | Western Kentucky University | Ar’Meishia Burrow | Spring 2017
This is an English 200 paper that analyzes how point of view impacts the reader’s interpretation of The Penelopiad.
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The Penelopiad: Parody and Polyphony in Atwood’s Classical Rewriting | Ana Isael Bugeda Díaz | July 25
This article examines the ways in which The Penelopiad both fits in with and departs from the structure of Homer’s The Odyssey.
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Five Ways of Looking at The Penelopiad | Coral Ann Howells
This chapter offers five ways of viewing The Penelopiad: negotiating with the dead, revisioning myths, Penelope’s tale, The Handmaid’s Tales, and The Penelopiad as performance. Each section is short enough that you could give them to groups to read, understand, and develop a presentation on.
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Bill Moyers: On Faith and Reason | Transcript of interview between Bill Moyers and Margaret Atwood on The Penelopiad
This interview stays closely focused on The Penelopiad, its context, and Atwood’s approaches to telling Penelope’s story.
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Epic Women: A Comparative Study of Appropriations of Homeric Helen and Penelope in Modern English Literature | Master Thesis by Stephanie Post, University of Leiden
Page 2 of this PDF is a table of contents; sections 2.3 and 5.1-3 are the most relevant to The Penelopiad.
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Myth-taken Identity: Margaret Atwood and Carol Ann Duffy’s Feminist Revisionist Mythology | Haley Taylor | Honors Thesis | 2017
PDF pages 4-5 and 8-12 provide context students may find helpful; pages 20-28, 32-35, and 37-40 focus most closely on The Penelopiad.
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The Odyssey’s Re-Vision: Female Agency and Women Shaming Women in Margaret Atwood’s “Helen of Tory Does Countertop Dancing” and The Penelopiad | University of Lynchburg | Deirdre Scanlon Spring 2015
This paper includes sections on women in ancient Greece (PDF page 5), the origin of the patriarchy or the disconnection of matrilineal genealogy (10), revisionist mythmaking—silenced female perspectives heard (15), appropriation and reappropriation of the body (22), women shaming women (28), a new system of identification (33). The pages most closely connected to The Penelopiad are 19-22, 26-28, 30-33, 36-37.
To read “Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing,” click here.
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Lesson plans and other teaching resources

The Penelopiad Reading Guide | Jessica Gokhberg.com
In the right margin, under World Literature (9th Grade, Fall 2021) is the link to a reading guide for The Penelopiad. The link will take you to a Google Doc with general questions, background questions that connect to heroic epics and questions about concepts and themes in The Penelopiad.
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A short guide to The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood and Photograph 51 by Anna Ziegler | Educatguides.com
This site includes a mini and extended plot summary, overarching themes with examples from the text, key characters with descriptions, and key quotes. The guide is available to download as a PDF. To read about Photograph 51, click here.
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Reading Guide from The Penelopiad | Penguin Random House Canada
This guide has eleven discussion questions for The Penelopiad. Some are literary questions, some are reader-response.
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The Penelopiad: A Study Guide | Nightwood Theater
This guide includes information that applies to both the novel and play version of The Penelopiad. Page 2 has a table of contents to help narrow down which resources are most useful.
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The Penelopiad Reading Guides | Ms. Chapman’s Class (Pre-AP) | Teacher website
The links posted to this teacher website are designed for students, but are very useful.

On page 1:
The link called “The Penelopiad - Penelope” opens a Word document that gives a review of Penelope with extracts from the text that highlight her point of view as a character.
The link “The Penelopiad Part 1 Reading Guide” opens a Word Doc with 14 reading questions to go with the extract.

On page 2:
The link called “The Penelopiad - The Maids” is extracts from the text that highlight the maids’ experiences in the novel.
The link called “The Penelopiad Part 2 Reading Guide” has 10 questions to go with the extract.

Shopping List

Texts and other resources you may find helpful.

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The Penelopiad (the novel)
 Paperback on Amazon.com
Hardcover on Amazon.com
Study Guide: The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood  By SuperSummary
 Paperback on Amazon.com
The Penelopiad (the play)
 Paperback on Amazon.com