The Twelve Maids

The 12 maids symbolize female oppression. While the women struggle against their archaic symbolic representation throughout the novel, they simultaneously fulfill a reinvented narrative device; in Atwood's tale the maids' inability to break out of their collective voice and emerge as individual identities, proves the powerful oppression of their age-old design. Brought to Ithaca as playmates for Telemachus, and later serving as agents of Penelope's many schemes, the maids represent the universal woman's struggle to claim ownership of her voice and personhood amidst a patriarchal society.

The Shroud

The funeral shroud Penelope weaves and unwinds as a means of staving off the Suitors' aggressions, represents agency and control. Though many refer to the shroud as a web, Penelope tells her reader the garment was a meant as the opposite: a means of escaping the Suitors' snares, rather than as a snare in which to entrap...