"Penelope," like all the dramatic monologues in Carol Ann Duffy's collection The World's Wife, retells a familiar story from the perspective of its once-voiceless female characters. Here, that character is the titular Penelope:
- Penelope was the wife of Odysseus—the legendary hero of The Odyssey, a man cursed to wander the seas for 20 years after the Trojan War.
- Penelope was left at home to wait for him, raise their son Telemachus, and fend off the suitors who started sniffing around once the man of the house had been gone a few years.
- Homer's heroine uses her weaving skills to keep those suitors at bay, promising to choose one of them to marry once she finishes a weaving project, then secretly unraveling her work every night.
- This Penelope will also turn to fabric art—but for rather different reasons.
As the poem opens, Penelope remembers the early days of Odysseus's absence. Back then, she says, she spent most of her time gazing down the road and "hoping to see him saunter home." The image makes her sound as loyal as the dog who likewise "mourned" his master at her knee.
These first lines characterize both Penelope and Odysseus. Penelope's fond memory of Odysseus's jaunty "saunter" suggests that she knows and loves her husband—a figure notable for his cool head, cleverness, and general cockiness. If Odysseus were to return home after a long absence, Penelope feels, he'd stroll up just as casually as if he'd ducked out to the corner store, and that's just what she misses about him.
Already, then, the poem's world feels more intimate and personal than sweeping and epic. This will be a right-up-close story of how a woman in Penelope's predicament might really feel and behave.
The poem's informal shape supports that tone. While this poem does use an overarching structure—five stanzas of nine lines apiece—those stanzas are all written in casual, approachable free verse, making Penelope sound as natural as if she were speaking to a friend.