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Anna Maynard

English G Block

December 11, 2018 Portfolio

The Dominion of the Maids

In his first life, Odysseus made the terrible decision to have twelve young maids killed,

time would come to show that those vengeful maids would prevail and fightback to make his life

literally a living hell.The male dominance the encompasses the lives of Odysseus, the maids, and

Penelope allows for brutal events to transpire unto the women while the men thrive off the lack

of power given to the women. During their life on Earth, the maids constantly endure rape and

torture under the allowance of Odysseus, he permits noblemen to rape the maids with his

“permission”. The seemingly harmless maids faced a terrible death at the hands of an unwilling

Penelope and an all too willing sovereign. The twelve girls tell their story of pain through the

choruses which have a frequent occurrence throughout The Penelopiad and throughout these

narratives the maids express their believe they deserveneed of justice. justice despite their

missteps during their short lives. The once constantly controlled maids prevailed and achieved

justice in Hades, leaving behind the remains of an egotistical man to a life of constant fruitless

attempts to reach tranquility.The death and rape of the maids in Margret Atwood’s The

Penelopiad represent the overwhelming patriarchal dominance that encompasses historical

society.

Noble men, and visitors of Odysseus enter the palace and immediately obtain power over

the maids due to their gender. Men have ultimate power over women in almost any position and

“So in effect, these maids were forced to sleep with the Suitors because if they resisted they
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would have been raped anyway, and much more unpleasantly” (182). The expectations of the

maids are to oblige to any male command, or the outcome would be worse for them. The maids

have no power over the dominant men, and are an object for the men’s pleasure any day or time.

It is okay for men to dominant over women and hurt them without their consent because

Odysseus, the maid’s owner says it is okay. The maids are allowed to be raped because a male

figure allows it. The maids must constantly oblige to any command laid upon them by the men,

the men have total power and can abuse and rape the women to their pleasure. The pain put onto

the maids goes unnoticed, because they are not important figures in society. The maids suffer

dehumanization through Odysseus and other notable men. Their opinion does not matter and due

to their lesser accounted for gender they constantly face unfair pain and torture.

The rape of the maids, viewed from the perspective of men, is an unimportant and

overlooked event. The women are not seen as people but as items and “you don’t have to get too

worked up about us… consider us pure symbol. We’re no more real than money” (168). The

maids express that they are not highly valued, they are just a symbol of the patriarchal

dominance engulfing the world. The unimportance of their deaths signifies how women

constantly face denied any power or opinion due to the all-too dominant male figures. The maids

encounter rape because to the men, they represent objects as unreal as money, the maids earn less

respect than money because replacements come easy and have no influence on society. Their

true worth, demolished through men intervention goes unknown to all readers of the Odyssey; in

the Penelope, however, Atwood shows the true value and impact that women can have on society

through the frequent chorus lines and the affect they have on Odysseus in the afterlife. The raped

maids, and the nonexistent impact their death has on society comes to show that the men of

Odysseus’ time could care less about the lives of twelve young girls.
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The maids died an unjust death, in their position, Odysseus should have been the one

hanging, but due to male dominance the maids were dead in his place. The “hanging did indeed

take place, but it was we, the twelve moon-maidens, who did the swinging in the place” (167).

In Hades, the maids constantly follow and attack Odysseus. He can never escape the

cycle of abuse. In his trial, the maids conjure the twelve furriers and entitle them to torment

Odysseus for the rest of eternity. “He sees them [the maids] 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,” (Atwood, 189). The maids cause both Odysseus and Penelope

immense pain by keeping them apart in the underworld. With this punishment, the 12 beautiful

maids attained justice; when they were living, the maids had each other for comfort; however,

Penelope had no one except Odysseus, whom she did not have access to during life. Only once

the sweet reprieve of death came to take them would this tragic era pass; however, even in death

Odysseus had enemies who pulled him away from his lawfully wedded wife. Odysseus gets what

he deserves after murdering the maids, the suitors, and countless other people in his lifetime;

however, he suffers a fate worse than death, he faces an eternity of suffering. The maids get

revenge, and ensure their own justice by making all of Odysseus’ lives “end badly, with a suicide

or an accident or a death in battle or an assassination,” (Atwood, 190). Odysseus never

experiences a life without war as a constant threat. The maids achieve justice by getting revenge

on Odysseus. After he killed them and denied their rape’s prominence, he deserves the fate the

maids are forcing upon him.

The maids also achieve justice by retaining the last word. In an argument, the winner, the

person with power, gets the last word. This small detail that Atwood imbedded in her story

conveys the importance of the maids, and the power and justice they attained in Hades. The
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maids finish their story with an Evoi about the lack of rights they had during their lifetime. The

maids overcome the adversities they faced while on earth, to get revenge upon the cruel dictator

who held his power over their heads for their entire lives. Although Odysseus’ power hungry

hands were not around for most of the maid’s lives, his influence darkened their livelihood

forever. The power Odysseus had transferred to the maids by the time he arrived in Hades. “We

took the blame/ it was not fair/but now we’re here/ we’re all here too/ and now we follow/ you,

we find you/now, we call/ to you to you/ too wit too woo,” (Atwood, 195). The maids imply with

their last words that they are not going to take what Odysseus did to them lightly, they are going

to repay him for what he has done, therefore insuring their justice. The power of the last word in

this situation, leads to the increase of the maid’s power. The once powerless maids now have a

form of control over Odysseus for the rest of time. They have control in the form of fear. The

thoughts of what Odysseus did come back to haunt him whenever he has an encounter with the

twelve maids, this memory will be remembered forever because the maids will never let go of

their long abscessed power.

Although the maids suffered immensely during their live time, and nothing could ever

completely make up for what happened to them, the maids achieve justice to a full extent in the

Penelopiad due the grudge they will hold on Odysseus forever. While the maids only faced one

life of suffering and pain, Odysseus will face many lives of torture. The maid’s actions show that

your decisions will always come back to haunt you. Odysseus’ mistakes in both the Odyssey and

the Penelopiad lead to constant agony in Hades. In the Odyssey, Odysseus’ arrogance almost led

to his death; similarly, his brash decision of slaughtering the maids led to eternal hurting both

mentally and physically. Humans will always make decisions-some bad and some good- and the
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story of Odysseus proves that every decision has negative or positive consequences that will

stick with you forever.

The rape and murder of the twelve loyal rmaids in Margret Atwood’s The Penelopiad

represent the unjust patriarchal dominance that Odysseus claimed during his life on Earth.

Evidence “ 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” (13-14)

Evidence: “Thus possibly our rape and subsequent hanging represent the overthrow of the

matrilineal moon-cult by an incoming group of usurping patriarchal father-god-worshipping

barbarians” (165).

Evidence “So in effect, these maids were forced to sleep with the Suitors because if theyd

resisted they would have been raped anyway, and much more unpleasantly” (182).
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I pledge my honor that I have neither given nor received aid on this assignment.

X______________________________________

Work Cited

Atwood, Margret, The Penelopiad. Great Britain: Canongate Books Ltd, 2005, Print.