So, I stumbled upon this book while searching for the Booker prize winners. I found the name of Margaret Atwood who is very popular as a poet and novelist. I was planning to read the other novel by her first which is "The Handmaid's Tale" but I'm going to keep it for later.
I'll also like to add that this is not a full fledged novel but a short novel or a long story as you can call it. Technically, they call it novella. I realized this in the middle of my reading because I was through with half of the book in like an hour. This is a problem with reading ebooks that sometimes you don't know how long this is going to be because I don't count the number of pages. Though, I thought I could have when I was reading my previous book "The Hindus".
Any ways, the book is not really a story but it is a narrative from Penelope's point of view who was the wife of Odysseus. I hope you are able to connect it with Odyssey. The narrative revolves around the twelve maids of Penelope and how they were hanged in the end without any proper reason. There is a whole reasoning of disloyalty etc in Odyssey but here it is given from Penelope's point of view.
There was no sequel of Odyssey which glorifies the female characters so this one is from a woman for a woman.
The whole story is around what all Penelope had gone through during the absence of Odysseus. It's rendered beautifully and it raises the question of freedom that a woman has versus a freedom that a man enjoys. Odysseus was gone for long years for Trojan war and he has a long list of adventures after that with witches, ogres and gods. Odyssey has details of his sleeping in the arms of beautiful maidens and goddesses but when he comes back after all these years first thing he was worried about was the chastity of his wife.
Why the whole epic glorifies his relations with other woman but very conservative about the conduct of Penelope? She doesn't have the freedom to do what she wants to do. If she does she will be labelled as a whore. May be she would have been hanged or brutally killed for that. Why chastity is a woman's virtue and she is judged on this scale so rigidly with zero tolerance?
There were no times when a woman was really glorified. We may find some deviations but they will be very rare. They are so rare that you can count them on fingers.
The saddest part is that there is no change in this perception of a woman, she is either objectified (like the maidens of Odyssey whom the Odysseus enjoys) or scrutinized for her loyalty/chastity/whatever-makes-a-man-feel-better.
I hope that one day we all have the freedom to live with dignity and make the choices that we want to make and do not follow what others have decided for us.
This is a pretty good read and it questions the very mindset of a society.
I'll also like to add that this is not a full fledged novel but a short novel or a long story as you can call it. Technically, they call it novella. I realized this in the middle of my reading because I was through with half of the book in like an hour. This is a problem with reading ebooks that sometimes you don't know how long this is going to be because I don't count the number of pages. Though, I thought I could have when I was reading my previous book "The Hindus".
Any ways, the book is not really a story but it is a narrative from Penelope's point of view who was the wife of Odysseus. I hope you are able to connect it with Odyssey. The narrative revolves around the twelve maids of Penelope and how they were hanged in the end without any proper reason. There is a whole reasoning of disloyalty etc in Odyssey but here it is given from Penelope's point of view.
There was no sequel of Odyssey which glorifies the female characters so this one is from a woman for a woman.
The whole story is around what all Penelope had gone through during the absence of Odysseus. It's rendered beautifully and it raises the question of freedom that a woman has versus a freedom that a man enjoys. Odysseus was gone for long years for Trojan war and he has a long list of adventures after that with witches, ogres and gods. Odyssey has details of his sleeping in the arms of beautiful maidens and goddesses but when he comes back after all these years first thing he was worried about was the chastity of his wife.
Why the whole epic glorifies his relations with other woman but very conservative about the conduct of Penelope? She doesn't have the freedom to do what she wants to do. If she does she will be labelled as a whore. May be she would have been hanged or brutally killed for that. Why chastity is a woman's virtue and she is judged on this scale so rigidly with zero tolerance?
There were no times when a woman was really glorified. We may find some deviations but they will be very rare. They are so rare that you can count them on fingers.
The saddest part is that there is no change in this perception of a woman, she is either objectified (like the maidens of Odyssey whom the Odysseus enjoys) or scrutinized for her loyalty/chastity/whatever-makes-a-man-feel-better.
I hope that one day we all have the freedom to live with dignity and make the choices that we want to make and do not follow what others have decided for us.
This is a pretty good read and it questions the very mindset of a society.
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