Middle School, Myth, and Margaret Atwood

My room in middle school was decorated with Princess Diana; I adored her class, her charisma, and, of course, the tragedy of her life in the public eye. It seemed fitting to wake up and face Princess Diana. I had another British icon on my wall this year: the infamous Queen Anne Boleyn. 

For some reason, I find myself drawn to these chastised women.

This isn’t new. Charlotte Temple from Charlotte, A Tale of Truth is an 18th-century tragic heroine. She is the perfect schoolgirl, then ruined and pregnant and sent to an early grave. Her story was used as an allegory, becoming a soft body to absorb political meaning in a time of anti-British propaganda. The victim of a rakish seducer, she symbolized early U.S. fears of undue foreign influence. Temple’s supposed grave later became an object of pilgrimage for fans, who leave flowers there.

Flashy pop stars Whitney, Britney, and Amy follow this script as well. Their suffering becomes stylized. Like Temple, their mythologized downfalls were made for us to consume—in a modern sense, in documentaries, tacky merchandise, and Tumblr aesthetics.

So, what’s the big deal here? 

At the beginning of sophomore year summer, I bought a copy of Too Much, a book describing the shame that comes with a woman who revels in her excess. To quote Rachel Verona Coate, “A woman who meets the world with intensity is a woman who endures lashes of shame and disapproval, from within as well as without.” To be a woman who is too much—too loud, too emotional, too angry, too anything. If you’re beautiful or rich enough, you might become something like Diana: beloved in your suffering,like poor Charlotte Temple.

After Trump was elected for the second time, my mom and I used to joke about how we’d survive Gilead—the dystopian world of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Of course, we were being dramatic, but as we watch the destruction of our constitution in real time, I’m not so sure. So I picked up a copy from the school library, my small act of rebellion.

In the novel, the Sons of Jacob overthrow the American government with the start of dismantling the Constitution. The terrorist group justifies its extremist violence with religious “legitimacy,” an equivalent to what MAGA extremists claim. Offred, the protagonist, is a Handmaid, one of the many women assigned to bear children for the ruling commanders. She describes a world where she has two purposes: to be a childbearing vessel and to take up as little space as possible. Handmaidens are stripped of their personhood.

Although our experience is not as drastic as Offred’s case, we live in a world where women are encouraged to take up as little space as possible. A specific quote in the book sat with me: "But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived…”

The first time I felt the need to make myself small wasn’t while reading The Handmaid’s Tale or hearing about the downfall of another pop icon—it was in the fifth grade. 

I was one of the first girls in my grade to develop, and I didn’t feel womanly power. 

Only shame. 

My friends giggled over training bras; I had already outgrown mine. The lace on my first “real” bra was like evidence I had done something wrong. The school uniform didn’t fit my chest anymore. I spent entire days  tugging at my shirt, pulling it down to hide something I didn’t ask for.

One day, a boy behind me laughed while I climbed the stairs to the third floor, snickering,“Rachel’s boobs are going up and down every time she goes up the steps.”

I laughed too—because I didn’t know what else to do, my face now hot with shame. It wasn’t just the shame of my changing body; it was the immediate awareness that my body was being watched, judged, mocked—and that I had no idea of the right way to fight back.

Now that I am older, and somewhat acquainted with my body, I would know to snap back at him. And to that, I thought of Penelope of Ithaca. Or, as I’d like to think, Penelope of Sparta.  Not just the waiting wife of The Odyssey, but Atwood’s angry, self-aware narrator in The Penelopiad—Penelope of Sparta, born of warriors. 

Maybe I would’ve turned around and made him feel as small as I did. Atwood gives Penelope teeth. She doesn't just wait; she seethes. Her voice was bitter and ironic.

My first time reading Homer’s Odyssey, I saw this Penelope as bland. Her passive waiting for Odysseus’s return was obedient and meek.  She remains untouched by the suitors, still beautiful and wise, someone who slept through Odysseus’ recapturing of Ithaca from the angry suitors. After this, she is ready to accept him into the wedding bed after his twenty years of adventures.

Atwood’s Penelope knows her myth has been sanitized, tied to Odysseus’ journey for thousands of years. She even jokes about how storytelling works: “Now that all the others have run out of air, it’s my turn to do a little story-making.”

Atwood does an incredible job of humanizing her female characters; Offred and Penelope succumb to actual human behavior, not idolized sainthood. They resent other women and mock their more feminine counterparts, Janine (a perfect “handmaiden”) and Helen of Troy with Penelope. They belittle and self-belittle. 

To stand up for yourself as a woman is to be tantalized, which is connected to Atwood’s incredible writing. What she does so well in The Penelopiad and The Handmaid’s Tale is humanize the kinds of women who have historically been flattened into symbols. Though this is best for an extremist comparison, Offred and Penelope both exist in extreme circumstances—one in Gilead, the other in myth.

It is nice to see heroines whose voices are laced with irony and resignation—as much as we have to admit it in a fourth-wave feminist world. Without the need to fight for the right to vote, this age is defined by digital activism and a focus on systemic misogyny. 

Maybe I have been too harsh on Homer’s Penelope. And I do not have the patience to have her strength to endure and use a strategy. I am someone who cannot sit still for very long. I am perfect for our society that rewards spectacle and volume.

  We put these women on teacups, T-shirts, and textbooks. We decorate our rooms with their faces. But behind all the imagery is a pattern: maybe it’s not just the glamorous tragedy, the quiet fire that never entirely went out. Maybe it’s finally time to let ourselves be too much, for the women who couldn’t.