The Odysseys of Margaret Atwood and Emily Wilson providing new literary and historical perspectives: a debate on feminist translation and adaptation

Introduction

The Canadian Margaret Atwood, one of the most important contemporary feminist writers, offers her readers, in The Penelopiad (2005), an adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey. Atwood allows the voice of Penelope, her character, and her slaves to assume the narrative in her adaptation of this epic poem – hitherto told by a male voice, the voice of Odysseus. We thus know another version of Odysseus' journey, a version from the female point of view, because, as Penelope manifests, “Now that all the others have run out of air” it's her “turn to do a little story-making” (Atwood 2005, 3). With that, the author instigates the revision of other historical narratives that have come down to us through the single vision, the male one. Decisions like the one taken by Atwood, which resulted in the circulation of a new perspective on the story of Odysseus, are increasingly necessary in a world where inequalities between men and women persist in being maintained in the most diverse and distinct sectors of society.

In the field of written art, are not the only ones who have projects like Atwood's – which raise feminist discussions – have brought important literary rereadings, bringing new possibilities for understanding history, enabling female protagonism and recognition, still so shy in the various social axes. Women translators who base their projects on positions and deliberations that do not tend to value one gender over another have also contributed to changing the literary tradition based on patriarchal values that, among other problems, impact female writing, as already discussed, for example, in A Room of One's Own (1929) and “Professions for Women” (1942) by Virginia Woolf.

In this scenario, Emily Wilson has gained prominence with her translation of Homer's Odyssey into English, published in 2018. When translating this poem, composed around three thousand years ago, the translator takes a different path from other translators who preceded her in this task, which, as she stated, included “misogynistic language that definitely doesn't correspond to the Greek” (Wilson 2018b).

To illustrate this, Wilson comments that Robert Fitzgerald, when translating the episode in which Telemachus mentions that he will hang women, refers to women as “sluts”. The translator, contrary to Fitzgerald, calling attention to a more inclusive way of presenting Homer’s narrative, seeks “to avoid importing contemporary types of sexism into this ancient poem, instead shining a clear light on the particular forms of sexism and patriarchy that do exist in the text, which are only partly familiar from our world” (Wilson 2018, 89).

In a reality marked by the centralization of thought and action predominantly linked to the masculine – therefore, by the silencing of the female voice –, it is fruitful that Wilson's task is also brought to the debate, as well as her thought, her way of perceiving and reacting through to this reality. Through her rewriting, Wilson summons us to participate in the Homeric journey. In addition, she offers us a benefit which is twofold, contact with a new historical perspective narrated by the female voice, as well as encouragement for women to engage in the forwaed movement of us, as women in society. 

With that in mind, I propose here a discussion involving both works, The Penelopiad (2005) by Margaret Atwood and The Odyssey (2018), translated into English by Emily Wilson, as well as the literary peritexts that accompany these works. From this, I aim to discuss how women writers, translators and adapters, through their creations anchored in purposes which meet the expectations of feminist aspects, provide the reading public with access to new literary and historical perspectives.

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood: breaking the silence

For Atwood (1982, 346), fiction is one of the few forms available that allows us to study our society "in its typical aspects; through which we can see ourselves and the ways in which we behave towards each other, through which we can see others and judge them and ourselves". In fact, this is the experience that the author gives us from The Penelopiad. This occurs as, through her narrative, it is possible to identify the strength of the patriarchal tradition reflected in the characters and, from this, establish connections with the reality experienced by women in today's society as a whole.

The Penelopiad is based on a specific episode of The Odyssey, the hanging of the twelve maids of Odysseus and Penelope. The narrative has the voices of Penelope, addressing her life, and the chorus of slaves, reporting the ordeal experienced by them in the castle in Ithaca. Atwood resorts to the use of paratext to reference the presence of her characters in the text that will follow. It is the inclusion of two epigraphs containing fragments of The Odyssey, namely: from Book 24 (191-194) and Book 222 (470-473). The epigraphs – like a curtain that is drawn in front of the two perspectives from which the story will be told – reference, respectively, the nobility of character of the faithful and "flawless Penelope, Icarius’ daughter" (Homer in Atwood 2005, xiii) and wife of Odysseus and the hanging scene of the female slaves whose "feet twitched, but not for very long" before their deaths (Homer in Atwood 2005, xiii).

Atwood (2005b) comments that if she were asked about the motivation for choosing her narrative, she would say that she was unaware of it and that “the hanging of the twelve 'maids' – slaves, really – at the end of The Odyssey seemed to her “unfair at first reading, and seems so still […]”, and writing The Penelopiad allowed her “not only to revisit an ancient and powerful tale, but to explore a few dark alleyways in the story” that have always intrigued her. Through the lense of feminisms, the author's statement is latent in her position on what has been propagated and naturalized through Western literature regarding what has become conventionalized as patriarchy.

In view of this, feminisms “saw that failing to consciously subscribe to one particular ideology in translation implies unconsciously adhering to the dominant (patriarchal) ideology” (Castro 2009). Definitely, when Atwood opted for this adaptation (a dimension of the translation task), retelling Odysseus' journey through Penelope's voice, she consciously inscribed herself in a markedly ideological context. The author's choice to explore this bias, hitherto unexplored, in The Odyssey, causes cracks in the propagation of dominant ideas that have remained printed throughout our history in literature. We are, then, challenged by her fiction to make connections between her plot and reality. We are encouraged to reflect on the condition of women throughout history – subjected, for example, to rules of conduct (like Penelope) and property protection (like slaves) – and on how literature, told by male voices, has contributed to ratify the patriarchal vision in the most diverse scenarios of life.

It is in the wake of this vision that, for example, borrowing the words of Haynes (2020, 3), "major female characters in Ovid" become "non-existent Hollywood wives in twenty-first-century cinema.", artists recreate "Helen to reflect the ideals of beauty of their own time", and we lost the "track of the clever, funny, sometimes frightening woman that she is in Homer". And, when it comes to the non-fictional world, following the same course, history has been built and fed on the foundations of patriarchy, condemning the female voice to silence.

But in The Penelopiad this silence is broken, and it is from Hades that the female voice echoes, the voice of Penelope. However, this happens only after her death. The voice appears presenting the facts, perceived only in this place, a place of exclusion. At that moment, she regrets her blindness towards Odysseus' conduct, revealing that she was aware that he "was tricky and a liar", but she did not imagine that "he would play his tricks and try out his lies" on her, because despite of the fact that she "had inklings, about his slipperiness, his wiliness, his foxiness, [...] his unscrupulousness" she "turned a blind eye", and kept her mouth shut (Atwood 2005, 2-3).

This is, therefore, the core of the reflection, which will extend throughout the narrative, regarding the feminine, its position in Homeric literature, which, in turn, portrays the context of its production, that is, archaic Greece in the Trojan age. A more direct description of this context can be found, for example, in "Odysseus`s Scar" (2003) by Auerbach. Referring to The Odyssey, Auerbach (2003, 21) underlines that "in the Homeric poems life is enacted only among the ruling class—others appear merely in the role of servants to that class. The ruling class is still so strongly patriarchal", in which "men divide their lives between war, hunting, marketplace councils, and feasting, while the women supervise the maids in the house".

However, the discussion around patriarchy provoked by Atwood, in The Penelopiad, far from being restricted to literary guidelines, has acquired more and more importance and strength in feminist debates. The main reason for this is the fact that the author establishes a link between fiction and a reality that, in addition to being perceived, contested and rewritten as she did, also needs to be re-elaborated beyond the literary space. For this, it is also necessary to consider the life of women throughout history, as "Women's history has certainly contributed to the identification of new facts about the past, expanded our understanding of them, and added to our store of historical knowledge" (Tilly 1989, 443). Modern writers, like Atwood, have found in literature a way to fulfill this need, redefining the vision plane through which we contemplate history, the past. Consequently, "Approaching the past through women's lives and stories offers a unique prism through which to find new and overlooked perspectives" (Ramires 2023, xiii).

In The Penelopiad, Atwood provides us with an experience in this direction by bringing the voices of Penelope and her slaves to the center of the narrative, telling their versions of a story which we first know through the voice of its male narrator. Now, somehow, the perspective becomes broader, because it incorporates the female perspective, and if we choose to listen to female voices, we will hear a voice that echoes from the top of their hierarchy followed by voices that, apart, manifest themselves in chorus. After all, Penelope is the Queen of Ithaca, and the slaves are her subjects. Her voice, in the depths of Hades, complains about her condition within her family context, because, in this scenario, she incorporated challenging roles: daughter taken to death by her father, wife betrayed, mother disrespected by her own son, Telemachus, and cousin of Helena – whose beauty she could not rival.

Worsening this situation, Penelope in her kingdom, during the twenty-year absence of Odysseus – to participate in the Trojan War – still experiences the onslaught of suitors, who wish to contract marriage with her, betting on her husband's non-return. Their intention was twofold: to use her as a breeder and to take the wealth of Ithaca. In the face of this situation, Penelope hears from these men that she "could probably have still squeezed out one or two little brats", and "What young man wouldn't want to marry a rich and famous widow? (Atwood 2005, 101-102). The result is doubts about her fidelity to her husband, since in order to get rid of the suitors, she promises to choose one of them as soon as the shroud is completed, which is woven in the daytime and undone during the night with the help of the slaves.

Although on a different hierarchical scale than the Queen of Ithaca, the female slaves, equally important players in Atwood's literary game, also present their manifesto. In a collective movement, their speeches bring to the surface, through the art of singing, the lament for their lives denouncing that, among other mistreatments, they were: “set to work in the palace, as children”, “drudged from dawn to dusk, as children”, “kicked awake”, “told we were lazy” (Atwood 2005, 23).

If, on the one hand, the female slaves in The Penelopiad represent an underprivileged category of society, on the other hand, they can be perceived as a reflection of a society affected by social imbalances that result in different claims and, sometimes, conflicting relationships within the female universe. This is suggested, for example, in the speech of Penelope's favorite slave, Melanto, who does not refrain from making the following comment:

Word has it that Penelope the Prissy

Was – when it came to sex – no shrinking 

    sissy!

Some said with Amphinomus she was

    sleeping.

Masking her lust with gales of moans and

   weeping;

Others, that each and every brisk contender

By turns did have the fortune to upend her,

By which promiscuous acts the goat – god Pan

Was then conceived, or so the fable ran.

The truth, dear auditors, is seldom certain –

But let us take a peek behind the curtain! (Atwood 2005, 147-148)

The collective action undertaken by the slaves, configured by the chorus that brings claims and accusations, has its parallel in reality when we look at different movements led and constituted by women. The same reasoning applies to the hanging of these characters. Telemachus kills them for approaching Penelope's suitors in order to help her get rid of them. This episode can be interpreted as a complaint related to conflicts experienced by women in the most different niches of society, motivated by issues of gender and social class. And Penelope's non-interference in this event can be understood as the omission of the upper class through these conflicts, since, for the character, "happy endings are best achieved by keeping the right doors locked and going to sleep during the rampages" (Atwood 2005, 3).

This picture outlined by Atwood, as we can see, confronts what is expressed in other rereadings of the epic that inspired it. The antagonism between Atwood's adaptation and Homer's classic text resides precisely in the strategy adopted by the author in letting the claims, complaints and self-perceptions of her female characters flow through the pages of her text. This new direction given to the myth by the author qualifies her as part of a group of women who have worked so that both the voices of women from the most different categories find spaces to propagate, and so that translators, adapters and writers are recognized as "women as influential actors in culture and writing” (Flotow 2011, 2).

Just as necessary as the revisions of old texts based on the idea of promoting gender equality, carried out based on adaptations, are the revisions that, guided by this idea, result in translations, because "Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical Direction – is for us more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival" (Rich 1972, 18).

The Odyssey by Emily Wilson: a look at "cracks and fissures"

With her translation of The Odyssey, Emily Wilson was the first woman to translate Homer's journey into English, and she has been critically acclaimed ever since. Among the reasons for the success of her work, which took five years to complete, the way in which she worked on the aesthetic aspects of the poem stands out. The translator adopted iambic pentameter, the same length as the source poem, and printed, as the author herself observes, “a fresh and contemporary register” to her translation (Wilson 2018, 87-88).

The merit of Wilson's recognition is also due to the way in which she interpreted and guided the content of the poem, extracting important aspects from it, once she realized more than the feats of heroism and euphemism present in previous interpretations of The Odyssey. She drew to her attention, for example, to “the social and ethical complexity of the poem” (Wilson 2018b), extending this perception to her translation. From her point of view,

It's also interesting that I'm seen as the only translator of the Odyssey who has a gender identity. It's equally interesting that I'm seen as the only translator with any kind of political or ethical interests or beliefs. I've been accused of being a ‘Social justice Warrior’, a term which I don't really understand, because I don't know why fighting for justice would be seen as a bad thing, and I also don't really understand why I would be perceived as a particularly politicized person. I care, above all, about language, poetics, narrative and sentence structure. But of course those things can also have a political valence. It's as if some people have not noticed, before reading my translation, that the Odyssey is in fact a poem about society and social values, and therefore, in a broad sense, it is a political poem, however it's translated or interpreted. If my translation, in the clarity and complexity with which I render relationships in the poem, has helped to make that basic fact about the Odyssey more visible, then that's a good thing. If my translation has also helped invite questions about the idea that the Odyssey celebrates something like modern conservative family values, idealized masculinity, and a prototype of modern white nationalism, then that's also a good thing, because those are not very good readings of the poem. I certainly don't think the Odyssey is going to tell you how to vote, and I'm not using it to grind any particular political axe. [...] I am thrilled that the publication of my translation, and the ensuing media focus on the ‘First Woman!’ headline, may do something to encourage more young women and other non-male people, and maybe other minorities, in the fields of classics, translation, history and poetry. It's also excellent that it has helped make more people more aware of a fact that translators (like writers in any interpretative field: journalists, historians, literary critics or social scientists) always make interpretative choices, and those choices are often likely to be affected, though not pre-determined, by the life experience and social identities of the interpreter, including gender among many other factors. I'm also delighted that the media response to my translation may be doing something to wake people up to the fact that the vast majority of translations of all Ancient Greek and Latin texts are by men, despite the fact that there are plenty of female classicists out there. Why don't more publishing editors hire more women to do this kind of work? And why do reviewers comment on gender only when the author/ translator is a woman? The real headline, in my opinion, should be about that dismal state of affairs, rather than about my being a Woman (Wilson 2018b).

It was, then, based on this perception of the aspects involved in the act of translating that Wilson developed her task, thus providing an opportunity for a necessary reflection, implying gender and power. In “Translator's Note” (Wilson 2018, 81-91) – the peritext that accompanies the translation of The Odyssey and on which my discussion, in this section, will be based hereafter –, the translator provides more details about her understanding of translation, as well as the solutions she adopted when translating this “poem that is deeply invested in female fidelity and male dominance” (Wilson 2018, 86).

From the reading of this peritext, it is possible to verify that Wilson's translation seeks to move away from solutions that denote patriarchal ideologies, gender discrimination, especially in relation to women, although the source text presents these particularities (Wilson 2018, 89). This attitude of the translator is characterized as a key point for carrying out this study, as it finds resonance in feminist translation studies, the perspective on which it is based.

In this bias, Sharma Garima (in Flotow; Kamal 2020, 188) reminds us, precisely, that “One of the most important aims of feminist approaches to translation studies is to examine the way translators consciously or unconsciously let their own ideological positions take over the 'women's' voice that is present in the original”. In Wilson's case, her ideological position can be perceived in advance printed in the peritext, as highlighted in the following excerpt:

A translator has a responsibility to acknowledge her own agency and to wrestle, in explicit and conscious ways, not only with the multiple meanings of the original in its own culture but also with what her own text may mean, and the effects it may have on its readers. Because The Odyssey has become such a foundational text in our educational system and in our imagination of Western history, I believe it is particularly important for the translator to think through and tease out its values, and to allow the reader to see the cracks and fissures in its constructed fantasy. I see this process not as a denial or abandonment of the original text, but as a way to pay deep attention to the original […] (Wilson 2018, 88).

The "cracks and fissures" detected by Wilson, in The Odyssey, are related in a special way to the representation of the female voice, to what is said about women and how they are called in the poem. This is confirmed in the translator's own words:

[...] in the scene where Telemachus oversees the hanging of the slaves who have been sleeping with the suitors, most translations introduce derogatory language (‘sluts’ or ‘whores’), suggesting that these women are being punished for a genuinely objectionable pattern of behavior, as if their sexual history actually justified their deaths. The original Greek does not label these slaves with any derogatory language. Many contemporary translators render Helen's ‘dog-face’ as if it were equivalent to ‘shameless Helen’ (or ‘Helen the bitch’). I have kept the metaphor (‘hounded’), and have also made sure that my Helen, like that of the original, refrains from blaming herself for what men have done in her name. In the difficult case of Penelope, I have tried to maintain what I see as the most important feature of her characterization, which is opacity. But I have also done my best to bring out her pain, her courage, her intelligence, and her strength (Wilson 2018, 89).

At least two observations should be made here considering Wilson's speech, the first of which is related to the interventionist aspect adopted and made explicit by the translator, after identifying misogyny in other translations of the poem. This is a clear position in favor of a fair revision of the inferences attributed to women that run through Homer's poem. As Flotow (1997, 24) puts it, "deliberate changes have often been made in rewritten texts, and frequently in the name of some ideology". It is interesting to underline that:

Ideology is considered to be a significant concept when it comes to translating. Indeed, far from understanding it as a deviation away from objectivity, ideology is now defined as a systematic set of values and beliefs shared by a particular community and which shape the way each person, and also each translator, interprets and represents the world. In fact, conceiving ideology as something apart from the translator would leave this mediating agent, as well as the actual process itself, outside the concept of cultural exchange. Objectivity and neutrality in translation are biased fallacies and, thus, the cultural turn could equally be called the ideological turn. Thus, schools of thought like the Manipulation School or Polysystem Theory now defend the idea that ‘ideology rather than linguistics or aesthetics crucially determines the operational choices of translators’ (Cronin 2000: 695). (Castro 2009).

Feminist translators also appropriate these actions. Translators, according to Sherry Simon (2005, 9), "can use the language as cultural intervention, as part of an effort to alter expressions of domination, whether at the level of concepts, of syntax or of terminology".

It is worth remembering that when "feminist translators intervene in a text for political reasons, they draw attention to their action. In so doing, they demonstrate how easily misogynist aspects of patriarchal language can be dismantled once they have been identified" (Flotow 1997, 25). This also occurs when interventions are motivated by ideological factors, as in the context under debate, in which the result of Wilson's disquiet in the face of the patriarchal language detected in previous translations of The Odyssey led her to promote a distinct project whose misogynistic language gave way to language attentive to feminist issues. In other words, borrowing the words of Flotow (1997, 34), Wilson intervenes "in places where images of women and women's voices no longer correspond to contemporary expectations", and makes them correspond, that is, Wilson imposes " corrective measures".

The second observation regarding the gender issue observed by the translator, involving translations of the Homeric text, consists of the understanding that Wilson's speech (2018, 89), previously presented, is a clear illustration of how language can serve as an instrument of power in the context of literary translation, because, as mentioned by Flotow (1997, 8), “language is not only a tool for communication but also a manipulative tool”. Whether in writing or in literary rewriting, we can see a significant recurrence of the manipulative process of language when dealing with ancient myths, especially regarding the presence of female characters in these stories.

Natalie Haynes (2020, 208), in Pandora's Jar, shows how literature and art – which are based on myths and survive to this day –, "were created in highly patriarchal societies which gave enormous power to a small group of wealthy men". However, Haynes (2020, 208) points out that "all too often it is the misogyny of more recent times that we are reading". Investigating Greco-Roman texts, in order to find other versions of the myths of this culture, Haynes found that there are no significant changes regarding the myths in these versions, when compared to their first versions, and that the patriarchal characteristics printed in the publications contemplating mythical texts that are available to readers today echo the modern patriarchal view.

In the situation investigated by Haynes, the texts were consciously manipulated in such a way that the important role previously attributed to female figures was erased from these materials. Contextualizing this question, the author brings ten women to the discussion, among them Pandora, Jocasta, Helen, Medusa, Penelope. Haynes' work brings up the names of these women, "whose stories have been told and retold – in paintings, plays, films, operas, musicals and more [...]", to show "how differently they were viewed in the ancient world [...]", as well as to show "how some modern writers and artists were finding these women", just like her, "and putting them back at the heart of the story" (Haynes 2020, 3) .

In Pandora's Jar, Haynes, like Wilson, also brings the fore the way in which translations are used as resources to deny or hide deplorable facts experienced by women. Referring to the sexual violence suffered by many women in ancient Greece, such as Phaedra and Stheneboea, Haynes (2020, 207) highlights that "Translations and retellings – particularly of Greek myths for children – tend to gloss over this uncomfortable fact. Of course, no one wants to traumatize a child learning about the Greeks for the first time", however, according to her point of view, "the problem with sanitizing these stories is that we develop a skewed perception".

Issues like this, which are directly related to patriarchal roots, and which have been debated for decades, remain in need of solutions and call for the work of professionals like Wilson to change it. The translator, bearing in mind the way women have been perceived and referenced based on a patriarchal conception in the translations of The Odyssey, promotes, from the rewriting of this poem, access to a new literary and historical perspective for her readers. It should be noted here that including the historical perspective in this context is no exaggeration, for although the poem is primarily a literary work of fiction, it is also considered by many historians, such as Alexander John Graham, to be a "piece of historical evidence" (1995, 3).

The Odyssey, as Otto Maria Carpeaux (2008, 52) clarifies, "is closely related to the Phoenician era of Mediterranean civilization" and, although there is no conclusive evidence regarding the places mentioned throughout the poem, it offers detailed observations about ancient Greek culture and society. Considering this, the following excerpt, presented in the introduction of the poem translated by Wilson, exemplifies the reach of The Odyssey as a literary and historical material, as we can see:

Children often encounter stories from The Odyssey as their first exposure to ancient Greek culture. The Odyssey is also often used in college literature classes, as the starting point for studying Western or world literature. It is a poem that has the power to speak to people from many different social backgrounds in the contemporary Anglo-American world. Reading The Odyssey with fresh, curious, and critical eyes may help us not only rethink our assumptions about people in the past, but also break down some of our modern distinctions and assumptions. Odysseus is a migrant, but he is also a political and military leader, a strategist, a poet, a loving husband and father, an adulterer, a homeless person, an athlete, a disabled cripple, a soldier with a traumatic past, a pirate, thief and liar, a fugitive, a colonial invader, a home owner, a sailor, a construction worker, a mass murderer, and a war hero. Immersing ourselves in his story, and considering how these categories can exist in the same imaginative space, may help us reconsider both the origins of Western literature, and our infinitely complex contemporary world (Homer 2018, 79).

Therefore, the Homeric poem being a source for these discussions, Wilson is also concerned with stereotyped conceptions, both in literature and historically, about non-Western people, which can be generated through its reading, and seeks to contribute to it not being perpetuated through her translation, for as she comments,

[...] The Odyssey is a poem that may seem to normalize or valorize the treatment of non-Western people as monsters. I have made clear, especially in my version of the Polyphemus episode, that this is not entirely true; the text allows for a certain amount of sympathy and even admiration for this maimed non-Greek person. Unlike many modern translators, I have avoided describing the Cyclops with words such as ‘savage’ which carry with them the legacy of early modern and modern forms of colonialism – a legacy that is, of course, anachronistic in the world of The Odyssey (Wilson 2018, 88). 

These conscious choices by Wilson support the idea that her translation was not carried out from a neutral point of view. It is noticeable that her work is based on an ideological perspective which differs from that of other translators who have committed themselves to translating The Odyssey. Simon (2005, 32) highlights to this ideological aspect, mentioning that "The contradictory pulls of different ideological pressures can also be a problem in translating texts which are historically, as well as culturally, distant", and "[…] Adding a historical dimension to this question introduces additional complexity".

This is visibly the context in which Wilson's translation takes place, that is, a historically and culturally distant context from her production, in which she needs to find solutions for what is presented as normalized or valued not only in relation to "treatment of non-Western people as monsters", but also regarding the female figures in the poem, as I have commented. Let us recall, for example, the appreciation of female fidelity in the poem. As highlighted in the introduction to the edition translated by Wilson, it "is important for maintaining a husband' s sense of honor and control" (Homer 2018, 40). Let us also remember the normalization of female violence, which Wilson treated differently from that presented in Homer's poem. Specifically, regarding the hanging of the slave women, Wilson records that she aimed "to invite genuine empathy rather than an objectifying thrill; while other translators call their death 'piteous' or 'pitiful,'", and that with her version “we glimpse their pain, not the feelings of a spectator: it is 'an agony' – 'They gasped feet twitching for a while, but not for long.'" (Wilson 2018, 86).

The translator, in her own words, did her best to "understand the language of the original text [...] and working through what Homer may have meant in archaic and classical Greece" (Wilson 2018, 86-87). She was also committed to "creating a new and coherent English text, which conveys something of the understanding but operates within an entirely different cultural context" (Wilson 2018, 87). In her point of view, different from that of Pierre Menard, a Borgiano character (1939), “All modern translations of ancient texts exist in a time, a place, and a language that are entirely alien from those of the original. All modern translations are equally modern" (Wilson 2018, 87). Wilson adds that "The question facing translators and their readers is whether to try to disguise this fact, through stylistic tricks such as archaism and an elevated, artificially "literary " register, or to underline it", which encourages "the readers to be aware that the text exists in two different temporal and spatial moments at once" (Wilson 2018, 87).

Observing the facts listed by Wilson that led her to translate The Odyssey in a different way from that of other authors – implied in her translation choices –, we can see that there is an urgent need to promote new readings, rewritings/translations of classic texts. Since the narratives presented in texts such as Homer's contribute to our understanding of the ancient world, enabling the circulation of new versions of these texts, as Wilson did, means enabling the reader's contact with a new literary and historical perspective.

From the point of view of feminist translation, works like Wilson's, therefore, can help contain imbalances and inequalities reinforced by stereotypes and gender discrimination, which persist in presenting themselves as a result of translation practices rooted in traditional conceptions. Consequently, in this context, what stands before the adoption of feminist principles is the possibility of a new way of both perceiving the world and acting in it, thus contributing to a more inclusive, equitable and just world through translation, because "Equality and social justice are two of the most pressing issues of the contemporary world" (Castro, Emek 2017, 93).

Conclusion

Given the above, we can say that both Wilson with her translation of The Odyssey and Atwood with her adaptation of this epic symbols of what we can call "transformative energy" in the literary field, due to the feminist perspective focused on these works. Their rewritings of the Homeric classic have given it an update, moving it to a place where it strives for inclusion, revealing important layers previously hidden in attention to patriarchal purposes. In this sense, their actions brought up the voices of female characters, silenced by tradition, providing a new way to understand, above all, history from a new perspective. As Flotow states (1997, 43-44) “Feminist translators (feminist readers and rewriters) working in a context and culture conducive to feminist writing are thus likely to produce work that is politically congruent with their time”.