Chapter V – Asphodel

1. What do you make of the passage where Penelope describes a change in ‘customs’, such
that the Greek underworld has been ‘upstaged by a much more spectacular establishment
down the road’? What do you think she is describing and what are some implications?

2. In an intertextual reference to Christopher Marlowe’s play ‘Dr Faustus’, Penelope laments

the fact that ‘magicians’ preferred to conjure Helen rather than her. Why do you think
Atwood has made the character of Penelope so self-conscious about her own reputation –
and so jealous of Helen’s?

Chapter VI – My Marriage

1. What are the ‘enormous palaces that have … no kings and queens in them’ described by
Penelope in this chapter? What point is Atwood making and how is she making it?

2. ‘I was a kind girl – kinder than Helen, or so I thought.’ Write three or four sentences of
creative writing in Penelope’s voice which develop the hint packed up in ‘so I thought’.

3. ‘The maids were my sources of information… they could study the men from all angles… no
one cared who might worm his way in between their legs.’ What impression do you get
about Penelope’s attitude toward her female servants from this passage?

4. Read the section of this chapter where Penelope inquires into her Uncle Tyndareus’ reasons
for helping Odysseus to win her in a footrace against other suitors. Many of us, reading
myths, are aware of a certain interpretive uncertainty. We know that there are multiple
versions of any given story and competing theories that might make sense of it. Atwood
builds on this aspect of myth by making Penelope – herself a mythic character – subject to
the same uncertainty. She is, in effect, a character who seeks to interpret, or theorise, the
fictional narrative of her own life. So what? Discuss in pairs.

5. Withheld information is a motif that recurs in this text. Find at least three references to
hidden or unspoken knowledge and read them side-by-side. What factors keep people from
knowing – or from telling what they know – in this novel?