The Iliad: as retold by women

~ The Silence of the Girls, by Pat Barker. ~

It must have been more than 20 years ago when Pat Barker kindly granted me an interview in my MA research. I was then studying her earlier novels in juxtapositon to Gloria Naylor’s work; these two authors had a correspondence, which Barker was kind enough to share with me. (I remember her being extremely kind to a newly fledged postgraduate student carrying out her first literary interview.) In both Blow your House Down and Union Street, Barker wrote feisty characters in dilapidated, squalid settings and situations in northern England, where destitution and desperation are the norm on the streets. Her hallmarks are always of stark realism, strong female voices, survival under dire conditions, grimly hanging onto hopeless hope. 

In that tradition, her latest novel does not disappoint. It is a rewriting of the Iliad from the perspective of the women, because so many classics, and stories of war particularly, have been told from the male perspective, giving voice to male experiences, sidelining what happens to the women and children after heroes have been slain and cities have fallen. 

The Silence of the Girls tells the story of Briseis, wife of king Mynes of Lyrnessus, which was captured and sacked by the Greeks on their campaign to conquer Troy. The fall of Lyrnessus is swift and savage, and Briseis, along with the other royal women who did not commit suicide to escape this fate, were captured and taken by ship to an island just a mile from Troy, where the Greeks were encamped. All these women were now of course slaves. Barker illustrates how the fortunes of war hit women and children the hardest, as they have no defenses once their men are killed. They are carried off as plunder, humiliated and abused in both revenge and triumph, and have all rights, properties, dignities stripped from then.

Briseis found herself given to the great warrior Achilles, as a prize. Barker writes beautifully of the psychological trauma, of the living in a state of fear, the paralysis, the despair, the slow reawakening to life and hope, and resignation which enables long term survival. Not only does Briseis endure repeated rape and physical abuse, as slaves are all vulnerable to, she constantly fears Achilles may give her over to his men, for gang raping. She also sees that many of her fellow-countrywomen are far worse off than her: routinely abused in all ways, not given enough to eat, doing the hardest tasks, and made to live in the worst of conditions.

Briseis, who was a queen, explains how a slave ceases to think of herself as a person, and ends up thinking of herself as a thing. Indeed, she herself is later sent to Agememnon at one point, who takes her from Achilles just to show his power and in replacement of a girl/prize he was forced to give up to appease the gods. She is later sent back when Agamemnon wants in turn to appease Achilles. She is just an item in a game of men’s politics, as are all the captives and plunder taken. There are other tales of other women in this story too, who are routinely treated as toys and trophies, so as things indeed, not humans with agency or rights. The novel ends with the sacrifice of Polyxena, youngest daughter of King Priam, on the burial mound of Achilles – which mirrors Agememnon’s own ready sacrifice of his daughter Iphegenia to secure fair winds for his sailing. Even the most royal of women are but pawns in this era and place. As women have often been, in most eras and places. 

Barker writes a very poignant scene of how King Priam, at the eminent fall of Troy, comes to beg Achilles for the body of Hector, his son, whom Achilles killed and then kept dragging around the city walls, in revenge for Hector’s killing of Achilles’ closest friend, Patroclus. Barker tells many side stories of how men’s honour cannot be impinged upon, is extremely touchy, how so many pay a price for the pride of men. She juxtaposes how King Priam may have come to kiss the hands of the man who killed his son, but what was that in comparison to queens (and all the other women) to have to be raped by the murderers of husbands, fathers, sons and brothers? And beyond the nightly rapes, to serve as slaves of these same murderers by day, cooking their food, weaving for them, healing them, cleaning and toiling for their enemy. Honour, so precious to men, is routinely denied to women. The women’s ability to adapt to and learn to accept even the seemingly unacceptable – by undergoing even the worst of continuous degradation, shaming and mortification which includes physical, emotional, psychological pain – is in itself an achievement.

However, the novel is quite nuanced, exploring how slaves can end up sympathising with captors, even if they also hate them. She shows how women’s loyalties are conflicted, particularly after they have children whose fathers are their owners, and indeed, whose fathers may have killed their other children. For all Briseis’ fierce fight to hold onto her selfhood and dignity, when she has a choice to escape to Troy before it falls, she suddenly desists. She seems to realise that she has no future there, for even if she can reach the safety of her sister’s house, when Troy falls, she will be taken again, enslaved again. She is also extremely attached to Patroclus, Achilles’ closest friend, because he showed her much kindness when she was captured, despite the fact he is a prince in the camp of those who killed her family and enslaved her.  And once she is pregnant with Achilles’ child, he marries her to Alcimus, his right hand man, without the consent of either party (which is not needed). In doing so, he is safeguarding her future (though most likely for the sake of the child). Briseis chooses to stay with Alcimus eventually, even when she has a chance to do otherwise. She elects a future under the new conditions thrust upon her, however dangerous and/or dire, rather than end her life as she knew it. How closely indeed we grasp the very chains that bind us.

There is something quite stylised about this novel. Its writing holds the reader at arm’s length, communicating vividly but always with reservation. Barker walks us through these camps of war, giving us briefest glimpses only of the sufferings and conditions.The reader is a spectator, never more.  It is therefore harrowing intellectually, rather than viscerally; much is symbolic, rather than literal. It is more traumatic for all that we do not see – but which Barker gestures at – than what we are shown. The book demands to be read on its own terms, but rewards such a reading.

The Silence of the Girls, by Pat Barker. Doubleday, 2018