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From the Underworld, Penelope, wife of Odysseus, decides to tell at last her version of the events that have been immortalized in the Odyssey. Penelope’s Twelve Maids, who were hanged by Odysseus and his and Penelope’s son, Telemachus, also provide commentary on the events in the form of a Greek chorus. Penelope starts by telling of her childhood. She was born to King Icarius of Sparta and a woman who was a Naiad, or half nymph. When Penelope was a baby, her father tried to have her drowned. Penelope was saved by a flock of ducks, but her father’s motivation for having her killed is still unknown to her. After this incident, along with the coldness of her mother, Penelope learned to be suspicious of other people. The Maids contrast their own childhood with Penelope’s, showing how much they suffered compared to Penelope’s privileged, if lonely, youth. At the age of fifteen, several men compete in a race to win Penelope’s hand in marriage. Odysseus, a king from the far-off island of Ithaca, cheats with the help of Penelope’s uncle to win the race. After their marriage, Odysseus and Penelope make the journey to Ithaca. The Maids comment on how they would like to have the opportunity to marry a prince.
    
While Penelope falls in love with Odysseus, she is lonely in Ithaca with no female companions. A year after she gives birth to Telemachus, Odysseus and Penelope receive word that Penelope’s cousin Helen, who is married to King Menelaus, has run away with a Trojan prince, Paris. Several men, including Odysseus, had sworn an oath that they would protect Menelaus’s right to Helen, and so Menelaus plans to go to war with Troy. When he and his men come to enlist Odysseus, Odysseus feigns madness, acting like a peasant plowing the fields. However, one of the men puts baby Telemachus in Odysseus’s path, forcing him to redirect the plow and show that he is sane after all. Odysseus is forced to go to war. Over the next ten years, Penelope hears stories of the war, which finally ends when Odysseus proposes sneaking soldiers into the city of Troy via a wooden horse. However, Odysseus still does not return home. In his absence, several Suitors arrive at the palace, hoping to marry Penelope to access her wealth. 

Hoping to buy time until Odysseus returns home, Penelope tells the Suitors she cannot choose a new husband until she finishes weaving a funeral shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes. While she weaves during the day, at night, she and her twelve most trusted Maids unravel the shroud so that she does not make any progress on it. Penelope also enlists the Maids to infiltrate the Suitors by spending time with them and speaking badly of Penelope and Telemachus. The Maids follow her orders and are either raped or seduced by the Suitors. While Penelope feels bad about this, she finds the information they give her too valuable to ask them to stop. However, the Suitors discover from one of the Maids that Penelope has been deceiving them with the shroud. She then promises to finish it quickly and then select a husband.

Soon after, Odysseus returns to Ithaca disguised as a beggar. Penelope recognizes him but feigns ignorance for the sake of his pride. She suggests an archery competition among the Suitors, knowing only Odysseus would be able to string his bow. While Penelope is asleep in her room, likely drugged, Odysseus wins the archery competition, throws off his disguise, and murders the Suitors. He then orders his childhood nurse, Eurycleia, to point out the Maids who had been disloyal to him. Eurycleia points out Penelope’s Twelve Maids, and Odysseus and Telemachus hang them. Odysseus then reveals his true identity to Penelope, who acts surprised to see him, before leaving on another journey to cleanse himself of the murders of the Suitors and the Maids. In their chapters, the Maids discuss their murders both in an anthropology lecture and in a trial. However, Odysseus is not punished for his crimes against them. 

In the Underworld, Penelope has never been able to talk with the Maids, who avoid her. She remains around the fields of asphodel, occasionally meeting Helen, whom she still blames for the Trojan War, and the Suitors, who blame her for their deaths. Penelope reunites with Odysseus whenever one of his new lives ends. He always chooses to be reborn into the world of the living as the Maids come after him, haunting him in both the Underworld and on earth.

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