Paper 2 Quotes - The Penelopiad

Low Art

A Low Art from the novel The Penelopiad talks about the view of Penelope of her husband, Odysseus.

• Odysseus has this persona of being a sweet talker. He played a trick on Penelope and made her believe his version of events. Until one day Penelope realized that people are gossiping and making fun of her behind her back.

• In today’s generation, there are people who are like Odysseus who are delighted in making stories with the absence of veracity.

• Gossiping is now often done with people with the help of social media or even in personal. Gossiping can even ruin someone’s life and can be the cause of having an increased rate of people who have low self-esteem or even depression

• . Low art because they are the kind of people who are low-class that always gossip even no one is bothering them.

Now that I’m dead I know everything

• Opening line

• Very blunt

• Leaves use with more questions than answers

• Overseeing

• Ethereal being beyond what we know

So I’ll a thread of of my own

• Allusion to original story

• domesticity as power

• Narrative line

• metaphor for storytelling

The Chorus Line: A Rope-Jumping Rhyme

• a group of dancers and singers - like penelope their stories aren’t told

• supporting cast

• Rhyme - chant, rhythm from skipping rope

• Childish

• Innocence was taken

We are the maids

the ones your killed

the ones you failed

• Directed to odysseus

• “we” and “you” - us vs them mentality

• extended metaphor of domestic and sexual abuse

• Repetition - repeated at the end, cyclical nature of abuse

We danced in the air

our bare feet twitched

it was not fair

• double standards

• Metaphor of being hanged to dance

• Unnerving/unsettling beauty of death

with every goddess, queen, and bitch

from there to here

you scratched your itch

• Juxtoposition - sacred → regal → derogatory

• Idiom - you scratched your itch, satisfy desires

  • diminished to animalistic impulses

• Tone - accusatory, biting

you licked out fear

it gave you pleasure

you raised your hand

you watched us fall

• Innocent but killed

• Imagery - sensory imagery of something intimate/predatory consumption of fear, expressing helplessness

• Metaphor - fear is something you cannot literally lick; taking pleasure in someone’s fear, “you raised your hand” exerting power or authority

• personafication - “fear…gave you pleasure” attributes agency to fear, as if it can give

• Reptition - “you” direct accusation and emotional intensity

• Juxtaposition - “you raised your hand, you watched us fall” power vs vulnerability

The Chorus Line: Kiddie Mourn, A Lament by the Maids

• Lament - mourning song

• Loss of innocence

• abused before being betrayed

• Vulnerable

we too were children. We too were born to the wrong parents.

• Collective pronoun/repetition - “we” builds solidarity and shared identity and experience

• Tone - sorrow, accusatory, reflective

• Characterization - presents self as victim

• social critique - injustice in upbringing

• Diminishes suffering by comparison 

we swayed our hips, we lurked, we winked, we signalled with our eyebrows, even when we were children; we met boys behind pigpens, noble boys and ignoble boys alike.

• sensual/flirty semantic field - imagery

• Repetition - we

• active verbs - swayed, lurked, winked imply vivid physicality, intentional, agency

• juxtaposition - “noble…ignoble” contrast of social status, indiscriminate, rebellious

I was smart, though: considering the times, very smart. That seems to be what I was known for: being smart. That and my weaving, and my devotion to my husband, and my discretion.

• self-reflection - aware of how she is perceived

• Nominalisation - “being smart” turning an adjective into a noun to classify the phrase

• listing evaluative nouns - virtues and skills, reflecting how her identity is defined socially and narratively

• Repetition of a possessive - asserts a ownership of identity, rhythmic - obligation, highlights individual roles assigned to her

• Short syntax - certainty, self definition, mimics pattern of though/consciousness, building cumulative meaning

• Juxtaposition - irony of being smart (intellectually independent) and traits that conform to domestic ideas

Children were vehicles for passing things along.

• Metaphor - children compared to tools or vehicles to imply they carry and transmit values and culture

• Parallels, in Medea, Medea weaponises the children against Jason for her revenge

I know it isn't me they're after, not Penelope the Duck. It's only what comes with me - the royal connection, the pile of glittering junk. No man will ever kill himself for love of me.

• First-person narration - internal thoughts, insecurities, intimacy and vulnerability

• Internal monologue - access to private feelings and self-doubt

• Metaphor - diminishes the value of royalty/wealth, suggesting it is superficial and meaningless

• Symbolism - inherited status and power rather than personal worth; highlights identity tied to monarchy

• Juxtaposition - “the duck…only what comes with me.” contrast of her personal identity and her role/status: emotional separation between self and public image

• Negative diction - “no man will ever”, “ glittering junk” conveys insecurity and cynicism about her own value and relationships

• Irony - royalty and junk, tension between perceived privilege an personal dissatisfaction

And so I was handed over to Odysseus, like a package of meat. A package of meat in a wrapping of gold, mind you. A sort of gilded pudding.

• Simile - compared to meat, loss of autonomy

• Metaphor - valued only for appearance

• Humorous imagery - comical, commodification, indignity

• repetition - diminishing person to object

• Tone - bitter/ironic, resentment and sarcasm

Oh, if a young hero came a-marrying me, I'd always be beautiful, happy, and free!

• Exclamatory

• Modal verb - “if…”, hypothetical, longing, unreal wish

• Poetic register - “a-marrying” ballad style/old-fashioned

• Hyperbole - “always..” exaggerated promise of perfection and happines

• Idealisation of romance

• alliteration - b

Oh gods and oh prophets, please alter my life...Hard work is my destiny, death is my fate!

• Hyperbole - hardship

• Parallelism - contrast of destiny and fate

• Emotive language - suffering, desperation

• Religious/mythological allusion - invoking divine intervention

Odysseus was the guest of a goddess on an enchanted isle...she'd turned his men into pigs - not a hard job in my view - but she had turned them back into men because she'd fallen in love with him and was feeding him

• semantic field of love

• Blasé tone - jealousy

I have to admit that I occasionally daydreamed about which one I would rather go to bed with, if it came to that.

• Juxtapose - challenges the social and narrative perception of her being a modest wife

• Repressed her won desires

• Double standards

We'll stop their mouths by sending them to Hades - He'll string them up as grubby wicked ladies!

• Tone - resigned, artificial, performative

• Ironic

• Diction - model, passive, identity only exists in how she is remembered

• Critiques social expectation

• has to reduce herself for her husband

They were like the daughters I never had. (Starts to weep.) I felt so sorry for them! But most maids got raped, sooner or later; a deplorable but common feature of palace life. It wasn’t the fact of their being raped that told against them, in the mind of Odysseus. It’s that they were raped without permission.

• Metaphor - emotional meaning, but does not reveal they helped her spy, shift in perspective

• Emotive language - reflectiv

• Deviates from Odysseus to Maids ‘wrongs' - reflection of victim blaming and societal injustices to women

However, your client’s times were not our times. Standards of behaviour were different then. It would be unfortunate if this regrettable but minor incident were allowed to stand as a blot on an otherwise exceedingly distinguished career. Also I do not wish to be guilty of an anachronism. Therefore I must dismiss the case.

• Contextual reference - different era or norms rather than the incident itself

• Reframes blame

• evaluative language - discusses potential perception rather than incident, broader career

• Anachronism - something belonging to a period other than that in which it exists

• Undermines 

• Metacommentary - actions framed on era and not what was done

Envoi

• Adopting their voice - succeeded in telling their story

• a short stanza concluding a ballade.

• enjambment

we took the blame, it was not fair, but now we’re here we’re, all here too, the same as you, and now we follow you, we find you now, we call to you to you too wit too woo too wit too woo too woo

• Explicit communication - sending a message

• repetition - owl sounds, Athena, we

• Onomatopoeia

• haunt