The Silence of the Girls

Pat Barker tells the story of the Iliad mostly through the eyes of Briseis, who was a princess until the Greeks destroyed her city and gave her to Achilles as a slave.  Generally the story of Briseis and Achilles is portrayed as a love story, but Barker imagines the relationship quite differently, with Briseis feeling all the love a woman would feel for the person who had just killed her entire family and enslaved her, which is to say: not much.

Like Circe, Madeline Miller's wonderful novel about another minor female character in the Odyssey (and Galatea, and Livinia), the author tells the story from a feminist point of view, literally giving voice to a character who has just a handful of words in a book that is perhaps the first written account of toxic masculinity in western literature. 

Even though I knew what was going to happen, having seen Brad Pitt's ab-tactular rendition in Troy and, you know, other STUFF,  I could barely put The Silence of the Girls down.  What Barker does very well is move the focus to the women and help the reader imagine what it would be like to go from a life of freedom to one of enslavement.  "In later life, wherever I went, I always looked for the women of Troy who'd been scattered all over the Greek world. that skinny old woman with brown-spotted hands shuffling to answer her master's door, can that really be Queen Hecuba, who, as a young and beautiful girl, newly married, had led  the dancing in King Priam's hall? That that girl in the torn and shabby dress, hurrying to fetch water from the well, that that be one of Priam's daughters?"  The men fight in battles and either preserve their glory in conquest or perhaps in an honorable, brave death, but women suffer the consequences for the rest of their lives, a sorry footnote to the battle scenes.  But in these masterful retellings, the women not only become active participants in their own stories, but they also bear witness to the events.

The book reminded me of a performance of Trojan Women the IU theatre school did back in the 90s.  I was on the stage crew so I saw the show many times.  (What a season: Rough Crossing, Tom Stoppard, Trojan Women, Euripides, Hurleyburley, David Rabe, Uncle Vanya and Cabaret!) The actors created their own monologues that were interspersed throughout the show - it was all very 90's and felt like something special.  Anyway, I remember it fondly and also it wasn't too much work because all the sets were welded together and they didn't let the undergrads do that. 

image via

Silence of the Girls was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction if that impresses you (it does me!)  Happy reading!