‘Close as a kiss’: Gyn/Affection in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad

Margaret Atwood’s novella The Penelopiad (2005) seemingly celebrates Penelope’s agency in opposition to Homer’s myth in The Odyssey. However, the twelve murdered maids steal the book to suggest the possibility of what Janice Raymond calls gyn/affection, a female bonding based on the logic of emotion that, in Atwood’s revision, verges on Kristevan abjection, the sinister and the fantastic, and serves a cathartic effect not only in the maids but also in the reader. This essay aims to question the generally accepted empowerment of Atwood’s Penelope and celebrates the murdered maids as the locus of emotion, where marginal aspects of gender and class merge to weave a powerful metaphorical tapestry of popular and traditionally feminized literary genres that, in plunging into and embracing the semiotic realm, ultimately solidify into an eclectic but compact alternative tradition of women’s writing and myth-making.

The vulnerability of children with disabilities to abuse: a literature review.

The Children (N.I.) Order 1995 provides a legal framework for the care and protection of al! children including those with disabilities. The Order sets out a number of key principles which apply to all children, including that the child's welfare is paramount, that children should be safe and be protected through effective interventions, and that children with disabilities are to be recognised as children first.

Review of Periodical Literature Published in 2008 (VI Since 1945)

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