The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus

XXIV. The Chorus Line: An Anthropology Lecture

Presented by: The Maids

What is it that our number, the number of the maids the number twelve suggests to the educated mind? There are twelve apostles, there are twelve days of Christmas, yes, but there are twelve months, and what does the word month suggest to the educated mind? Yes? You, Sir, in the back? Correct! Month comes from moon, as everyone knows. Oh, it is no coincidence, no coincidence at all, that there were twelve of us, not eleven and not thirteen, and not the proverbial eight maids a-milking!

For we were not simply maids. We were not mere slaves and drudges. Oh no! Surely we had a higher function than that! Could it be that we were not the twelve maids, but the twelve maidens? The twelve moon-maidens, companions of Artemis, virginal but deadly goddess of the moon? Could it be that we were ritual sacrifices, devoted priestesses doing our part, first by indulging in orgiastic fertility-rite behaviour with the Suitors, then purifying ourselves by washing ourselves in the blood of the slain male victims such heaps of them, what an honour to the Goddess!—and renewing our virginity, as Artemis renewed hers by bathing in a spring dyed with the blood of Actaeon? We would then have willingly sacrificed ourselves, as was necessary, re-enacting the dark-of-the-moon phase, in order that the whole cycle might renew itself and the silvery new-moon-goddess rise once more. Why should Iphigenia be credited with selflessness and devotion, more than we?

This reading of the events in question ties in excuse the play on words with the ship’s hawser from which we dangled, for the new moon is a boat.

And then there’s the bow that figures so prominently in the story—the curved old-moon bow of Artemis, used to shoot an arrow through twelve axe-heads—twelve! The arrow passed through the loops of their handles, the round, moon-shaped loops! And the hanging itself—think, dear educated minds, of the significance of the hanging! Above the earth, up in the air, connected to the moon-governed sea by an umbilical boat-linked rope oh, there are too many clues for you to miss it!

What’s that, Sir? You in the back? Yes, correct, the number of lunar months is indeed thirteen, so there ought to have been thirteen of us. Therefore, you say smugly, we might add that our theory about ourselves is incorrect, since we were only twelve. But wait—there were in fact thirteen! The thirteenth was our High Priestess, the incarnation of Artemis herself. She was none other than yes! Queen Penelope!

Thus possibly our rape and subsequent hanging represent the overthrow of a matrilineal moon-cult by an incoming group of usurping patriarchal father-god-worshipping barbarians. The chief of them, notably Odysseus, would then claim kingship by marrying the High Priestess of our cult, namely Penelope.

No, Sir, we deny that this theory is merely unfounded feminist claptrap. We can understand your reluctance to have such things brought out into the open rapes and murders are not pleasant subjects—but such overthrows most certainly took place all around the Mediterranean Sea, as excavations at prehistoric sites have demonstrated over and over.

Surely those axes, so significantly not used as weapons in the ensuing slaughter, so significantly never explained in any satisfactory way by three thousand years of commentary—surely they must have been the double-bladed ritual labrys axes associated with the Great Mother cult among the

Minoans, the axes used to lop off the head of the

Year King at the end of his term of thirteen lunar months! For the rebelling Year King to use Her own bow to shoot an arrow through Her own ritual life-and-death axes, in order to demonstrate his power over Her what a desecration! Just as the patriarchal penis takes it upon itself to unilaterally shoot through the.But we’re getting carried away here.

In the pre-patriarchal scheme of things, there may well have been a bow-shooting contest, but it would have been properly conducted. He who won it would be declared ritual king for a year, and would then be hanged remember the Hanged Man motif, which survives now only as a lowly Tarot card. He would also have had his genitals torn off, as befits a male drone married to the Queen Bee. Both acts, the hanging and the genital-tearing-off, would have ensured the fertility of the crops. But usurping strongman Odysseus refused to die at the end of his rightful term. Greedy for prolonged life and power, he found substitutes. Genitals were indeed torn off, but they were not his—they belonged to the goatherd Melanthius. Hanging did indeed take place, but it was we, the twelve moon-maidens, who did the swinging in his place.

We could go on. Would you like to see some vase paintings, some carved Goddess cult objects? No? Never mind. Point being that you don’t have to get too worked up about us, dear educated minds. You don’t have to think of us as real girls, real flesh and blood, real pain, real injustice. That might be too upsetting. Just discard the sordid part. Consider us pure symbol. We’re no more real than money.